Goals of WCAG 3.0

This specification together with all its associated supporting publications really has only one goal: to make the web a more accessible and usable environment for all persons with disabilities. All remaining detail is but definition and procedure in service of this one, over-arching goal applicable to the smallest, individually hosted web page and the largest commercial or public service web presence alike. With the ever-increasing reliance on web technology in society today, it's every more critical to provide guidance on how to make accessing and interacting with web content, as well as the process of creating and publishing content on the web work well for people regardless of the disability they live with. The goal of WCAG 3.0 is to meet that challenge for beginners and for experts alike.

WCAG 3.0 functions in service of this goal. It moves us closer to the lived experience of persons with disabilities in key ways that will make it easier for content providers to support an even wider scope of disabilities than previous WCAG iterations. It moves us closer by providing direct methodologies and howtos for creating and assessing support for distinct categories of user needs, eg. blindness vs deafness vs various cognitive and learning disabilities. WCAG 3.0 makes it significantly easier to create content that is accessible to and usable by persons with various disabilities through application of the reimagined framework presented in this publication.

However not all that is planned for WCAG 3.0 is presented in this First Public Working Draft (FPWD). The majority of guidelines (together with their supporting methodologies) are yet to be written. Only one approach to validating conformance to WCAG 3.0 is presented here. Additional work in every section of this FPWD publication is clearly still work in progress. Nevertheless there's sufficient progress in both the framework and detail of WCAG 3.0 to warrant asking for considered review from the wider public.