WCAG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation Ready to Test Drive

Following is an announcement from the Web 
Accessibility Initiative (WAI) about the Web 
Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Candidate 
Recommendation. Additional announcements related 
to this release are also available:
         W3C Press Release: W3C Invites Developers to Implement WCAG 2.0
         http://www.w3.org/2008/04/wcag20cr-pressrelease
         W3C Blog Post: WCAG 2.0 takes a giant 
leap forward — Now it's your turn
         http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/04/wcag20_cr_april2008.html

Dear All:

WCAG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation Ready to Test Drive

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 
Working Group is excited to announce the 
publication of WCAG 2.0 as a W3C Candidate 
Recommendation on 30 April. WCAG 2.0 explains how 
to make Web sites, applications, and other 
content accessible to people with disabilities, and many elderly users.
         http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/CR-WCAG20-20080430/

Candidate Recommendation (CR) is a major step in 
the W3C standards development process; it signals 
that there is broad consensus in the Working 
Group and among public reviewers on the technical 
content of WCAG 2.0. The W3C Process stages are described in:
         How WAI Develops Accessibility Guidelines through the W3C Process
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/w3c-process

The primary purpose of this CR stage is for 
developers and designers to "test drive" WCAG 2.0 
to demonstrate that WCAG 2.0 can be implemented 
in Web sites. WAI encourages a broad range of Web 
sites and Web applications to use WCAG 2.0 at 
this stage, and share implementation experience. 
For information on submitting your implementations, see:
         WCAG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation Implementation Information
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/CR/
If you plan to provide implementations, please 
let us know your intentions by *23 May 2008*.
Actual implementations are due by *30 June 2008*.

It is important to note that some WCAG 2.0 
requirements are at risk; that is, they may not 
be included if there are not sufficient 
implementations. Items at risk are listed under “Items at Risk” in:
         http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/CR-WCAG20-20080430/#status_risk

While the focus of this stage is to collect 
implementations, the comment form and email address are still available from:
         Instructions for Commenting on WCAG 2.0 Documents
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/comments/

The different WCAG 2.0 documents that the WCAG 
Working Group updated with this publication are introduced in:
         Overview of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Documents
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20.php

A key tool for using WCAG 2.0 documents, which 
was previously called the "Quick Reference", is:
         How to Meet WCAG 2.0: A customizable 
quick reference to WCAG 2.0 requirements...
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/

For more information about the Candidate 
Recommendation status of WCAG 2.0 and the changes 
since the last publication, see:
         "Status of this Document" section of WCAG 2.0
         http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/CR-WCAG20-20080430/#status

WCAG 2.0 is part of a series of accessibility 
guidelines/standards developed by WAI, which are listed in:
         WAI Guidelines and Techniques
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech.html

Feel free to circulate this message to other 
lists; please avoid cross-postings where possible.

Please let us know if you have any questions. 
Thank you in advance for your help implementing WCAG 2.0.

Regards,

~Shawn Lawton Henry and Judy Brewer
On behalf of:
Loretta Guarino Reid, Co-chair of WCAG WG, and Computer Scientist, Google Inc.
Gregg Vanderheiden, Co-chair of WCAG WG, and 
Director of Trace R&D Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Michael Cooper, W3C Team Contact for WCAG WG

--
Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/CSAIL Building 32-G526
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Wednesday, 30 April 2008 18:31:39 UTC