2.1.1 Defining Accessibility as the Minimum Goal

Question 1

Making a web site accessible

Answer 1

1.experience usable
2.intuitiv
3.compelling
4.enjoyable.

Question 2

The strengths and limitations of guidelines

Answer 2

Guidelines — such as WCAG 2.1 — play a valuable role in helping web design and development teams create accessible content. They are the core foundation of techniques that give us a common vocabulary for discussing and creating accessibility solutions.

In fact, the guidelines were written to be objectively testable, which means that all of the subjective aspects of accessibility were purposely excluded from the guidelines.

The category of disability most neglected in current guidelines is cognitive disabilities, because many of the measurements of cognitive disability access include some degree of subjective judgment.

Question 3

Objective accessibility guideline

Answer 3

Many aspects of accessibility are objectively testable.

• All images must have an alt attribute.
• All form input elements must have a label.
• The header cells of a data table must be marked as header cells using <th>.
  *The page must have a title.
  *Color cannot be used as the only visual means of conveying information.

Question 4

Subjective accessibility guidelines

Answer 4

Accessibility best practices that aren’t so easily testable include things like:

Use visual cues to focus the user’s attention on the main purpose of the web page. (This is an important principle of message design and of interaction design, especially for users with cognitive disabilities, but how do you measure the degree to which the user’s attention is focused?)

Ensure the font is easily readable. (How do you define “easily?” At what point do you draw the line to designate one font as easily readable and another as not easily readable, and what criteria would you use in making that judgment?)

Minimize the cognitive skills required to use the web page. (How do you measure the degree of cognitive skill required to complete a task? At what point would you draw the line and say a certain task requires too much cognitive skill?)

Question 5

Ideas that should have been in the guidelines

Answer 5

Cognitive disabilities (see the W3C documents: Cognitive Accessibility Roadmap and Gap Analysis opens in a new window and Cognitive Accessibility User Research opens in a new window)

Low vision (see the W3C document: Accessibility Requirements for People with Low vision opens in a new window)

Mobile and touch devices (see the W3C documents: Mobile Accessibility: How WCAG 2.0 and Other W3C/WAI Guidelines Apply to Mobile opens in a new window and Proposed New WCAG 2.0 Techniques for Mobile opens in a new window)

Most by WCAG 2.1 addressed