Introducing The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Introduction Before giving a brief history of WCAG and describing its technical components at a very high, hopefully easy to follow level, I’m going to discuss what I believe is the most important thing people need to know about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines–the reality that their development is inequitable and largely excludes people with disabilities. I’m beginning with the lack of equity involved in the WCAG development process, because I’m hoping folks will consider what our lack of involvement in the technical aspects really mean for our odds of using WCAG to create a web that’s truly accessible to us. WCAG’s Lack of Equity I covered this at the end of a previous live version of the podcast, but it needs to be restated here. The process of developing the WCAG is not at all equitable or inclusive of members of the disability community. The WCAG is developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Specifically, the development of WCAG is done by the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. The current chairs of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group are Charles Adams (Oracle), Rachael Bradley Montgomery (Library of Congress), and Alastair Campbell (Nomensa a British company). As far as I can tell, and I have looked reasonably hard, none of the three is a user of assistive technologies. All of them describe themself as working on accessibility, in the field of accessibility, and/or advocating for accessibility for periods of years. I can’t find one mention of any of them discussing their life as a person with a disability, describing how they use assistive technologies, or commenting about how they are personally impacted by inaccessibility. I mentioned the employers of the chairs of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group because the Working Group is an organization that for all intents and purposes only allows other organizations to join as full members. This means that an individual (regardless of their disability status, knowledge of assistive technologies, web codes, and related tools) cannot join without an invitation unless their employer pays to be an organizational member or they are able to pay thousands of dollars to join as an individual. The Membership FAQ has lots of information about joining the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. The fees for joining the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group highlight the elitist, restrictive, inequitable nature of the WCAG development process. The current cheapest fee for joining, in the United States available to very small nonprofits and government agencies, is $7,900 Annually. The largest annual fee for a United States business is currently more than $77,000 annually. As the FAQ about the membership process and the fee structure for joining the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group indicate, the development of WCAG and the leadership of that development is a process that the vast majority of the disabled community cannot participate in at all. to make matters worse, the only people with a real shot at membership and the right to true participation are people who gain entrance in the organization with the permission of their employer. This structure creates an obvious conflict of interest forcing people to, at minimum, represent the wishes of their employer if they want to continue participating. So, the structure effectively guarantees very few people with disabilities will have an actual say in decision making and that the guidelines reflect the wishes of the business community–not the disability community. To pretend it welcomes participation and to offer a largely false nod to equity and inclusio