Taking accessibility into consideration for Website development is common practice
When WCAG 1.0 was released in 1999, only a few people took notice of Web accessibility. Since then, accessibility has firmly established itself as an essential requirement for website development due to the increase in benefits it brings to businesses, the greater awareness of business risks related to poor accessibility, and the recent improvements in user agent functionalities, including assistive technologies such as screen readers.
However, substantial knowledge is required to correctly understand guidelines such as the WCAG. In our WCAG Compliance Service, accessibility experts who have in-depth understanding of the guidelines can provide comprehensive support services ranging from simple consultation regarding the determination of the appropriate compliance level to validation of developed Web pages.
WCAG — The international standard for Web accessibility
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a guideline developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), and it offers various techniques for making Web-based content more accessible. WAI is an initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization that develops standards for internet-related technologies. As the name suggests, WAI undertakes a variety of activities for making the Web more accessible.
One of the key facts that should be understood when attempting to comply with WCAG is that there are three different conformance levels. The minimum conformance level is “A,” the intermediate conformance level is “AA,” and the highest conformance level is “AAA.” The higher conformance levels AA and AAA signify better accessibility of a website. In our WCAG Compliance Service, we can recommend the best conformance level for a target website based on its content and the degree of difficulty in validating the website.
Service Objectives
This service supports the development of websites that are compliant with the WCAG—the international standard for Web accessibility—and aims to enable the development of high-quality websites that can be accessible from a wide variety of user environments.
Service Overview
First, during the requirements specification stage, the targeted compliance level is determined. Subsequently, accessibility experts will test the website and make recommendations for improvements in accordance with the guidelines during the planning, implementation, and validation stages.
WCAG 2.0 Level A Compliance Case Studies
At Mitsue-Links, we have participated in the implementation testing of WCAG 2.0 by using two of our own websites as test sites.
Accessibility Blog
The Accessibility Blog broadcasts the Accessibility Podcast and publishes audio and video content for learning about assistive technologies. This multimedia content is also made compliant with WCAG by enabling keyboard operations and by providing subtitles and transcriptions (note: some portions fall outside the scope for compliance due to external factors).
Mitsue-Links CSR Web
While the Mitsue-Links CSR website does not contain any audio or video content, it makes use of many diagrams and tables. To make these components accessible, alternate texts are used, and attempts are made so that the important parts of the contents can be understood through the surrounding text alone (i.e., body of the text).
Service Flow
- Discussions to confirm customer needs
- Understand the current state
- Define the requirements and target conformance level
- Basic design, detailed design, and validation of designs
- Validation of individual Web pages
- Delivery
