USACM Provides Feedback on Non-Web Accessibility Guidelines

By Renee Dopplick, ACM Director of Public Policy

August 23, 2013

USACM submitted feedback to the W3C on the latest draft of the “WC3 Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.0 to Non-Web Information and Communications Technologies.” The proposed guidance document seeks to provide informative guidance on how the international standards for web accessibility, known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, can be interpreted and applied to non-web documents, software, and technologies.

As indicated in the final draft, several requirements of the international web accessibility standards and their success criteria apply verbatim to non-web ICT. Several other requirements comply: (a) by replacing “web” with “non-web document(s) and software”; (b) by adding “video description” and “descriptive narration” when the criteria refers to “audio description”; or (c) by adding “accessibility features of software” when the criteria refers to “user agents” and/or “assistive technologies.”

Detailed guidance is given for WCAG 2.0 requirements where applying them may pose challenges, such as resizing with assistive technologies, keyboard interfaces, parsing, and custom user interface components.

The document, if adopted by the W3C, will become a “Working Group Note” published by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

For more information, see the working draft of the WC3 Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.0 to Non-Web Information and Communications Technologies at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/WD-wcag2ict-20130711/