WD: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (Call for Wide Review)

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1

https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/WD-WCAG21-20171207/

Abstract


Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

WCAG 2.1 success criteria are written as testable statements that are not technology-specific. Guidance about satisfying the success criteria in specific technologies, as well as general information about interpreting the success criteria, is provided in separate documents. See Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview for an introduction and links to WCAG technical and educational material.

WCAG 2.1 extends Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 [WCAG20], which was published as a W3C Recommendation December 2008. Content that conforms to WCAG 2.1 also conforms to WCAG 2.0, and therefore to policies that reference WCAG 2.0.

Until WCAG 2.1 advances to W3C Recommendation, the current and referenceable document is Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 [WCAG20], published as a W3C Recommendation December 2008.

Status of the Document


This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.

This is a Working Draft of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 by the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. This is expected to be the final draft before the Working Group plans to advance the specification to Candidate Recommendation in late January 2018. This draft is a "last call" for comments and is published for wide review. Most success criteria are complete, but some are still under discussion. The success criteria under discussion are marked with editorial notes and pointers to the ongoing discussion. As these success criteria are finalized, they will be updated in the editors' draft.

Because this is the final Working Draft, we encourage you to comment on all success criteria as soon as possible. To comment, file an issue in the W3C WCAG 2.1 GitHub repository. Please create a new issue for each comment; do not add comments your comments to existing issues. If filing issues in GitHub is not feasible, send email to public-agwg-comments@w3.org (comment archive). Please submit comments are requested before 12 January 2018. In-progress updates to the document may be viewed in the publicly visible editors' draft.

This document was published by the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group as a Working Draft. This document is intended to become a W3C Recommendation.

Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

This document was produced by a group operating under the W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

This document is governed by the 1 March 2017 W3C Process Document.