Guide to Guideline 3.1 Level 3 Success Criterion 4 (proposed)

Major sections of this page

· Understanding Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

· Techniques for meeting Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

· Benefits and Examples of Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

What WCAG 2.0 requires

4. A mechanism is available to identify text that states important ideas or provides important information.

Note: This success criterion is in DRAFT form. It is presented to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group as a formal proposal, but it has not earned the consensus of the Working Group, and it does not appear in the current Public Working Draft at http://www.w3.org/tr/wcag20. It is presented here for discussion only. It must not be cited as a normative reference.

Understanding Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

Key terms and important concepts

[Note: This success criterion does not introduce new terms.]

Intent of this success criterion

The intent of this success criterion is to ensure that the most important ideas and information can be clearly identified.

Applicability: When does Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4 Apply?

This success criterion applies when the delivery unit includes text that presents ideas and/or information that users must understand in order to use the content.

Techniques for meeting Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

Technology-Independent techniques for Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

· Use a graphical icon to identify text sections, paragraphs, sentences, etc., that are important in understanding the content.

· Use markup to identify text (sections, paragraphs, sentences, etc.) that contains ideas or information that are important in understanding the content.

· Use “sidebars” to present ideas or information that are important to understanding the content.

· Use visual and/or auditory styles to emphasize material that is important to understanding the content.

· Provide a button or other device that reveals important content and/or “hides” less important material.

Technology-specific techniques for Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

HTML Techniques

· Emphasis

· CSS Styling

CSS Techniques

· Creating layout, positioning, layering, and alignment

· Hiding and showing content

· Creating foreground and background contrast

· Specifying background and foreground color

· Specifying font characteristics

· Outlining content

· Creating auditory presentations

Client-side scripting techniques

Advisory techniques: going beyond Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

· Use RDF to provide supplementary annotations for important content.

Benefits and Examples

Benefits: How Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4 Helps People with Disabilities

This success criterion helps people with learning disabilities or cognitive impairments that make it difficult to identify the most important material.

Examples of Guideline 3.1 L3 SC4

Example 1: Highlighting main ideas

The Web site for a university course in political science discusses different systems of government around the world. It provides detailed information about the governments in Europe, Asia, and North America, along with statistics about voter turnout, etc. On each page there is a button labeled “Highlight Key Information.” A student selects this button to show only the name of each country and its style of government; the label of the button changes to say, “Show all information.” Selecting the button now restores the original content of the page.