Section 1.5: Accessibility Standards and Guidelines, Part 1

What accessibility standards and guidelines should I know about?

At the time of this tutorial, there are 3 primary accessibility standards and guidelines.

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended 1998

• Covers all electronic and information technology used by federal agencies and departments
• Enforced through purchasing regulations
• Adopted by increasing numbers of state governments, including Texas
• Only one level of compliance

(Section 508 Standards )

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0, 1999)

• Current international standard
• 14 Guidelines, 65 Checkpoints, 3 Priority Levels
• Adopted by European Union and many member states, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain
• Foundation for US and other national standards

(Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 )

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (Future Standard)

• 4 Principles, 13 Guidelines, 65 Success Criteria, 3 Conformance Levels
• Major update of WCAG 1.0
• Applies to broad range of technologies
• More rigorously testable than WCAG 1.0 or Section 508
• Forthcoming 2007

Note: As a content provider, you likely do not need to have these guidelines memorized. However, you will want to know enough about them to identify which guidelines you want your project to use. You may also want to be able to check that the guidelines were used in development (See Lesson 5, Evaluation and Testing).