The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the US-based
standard-setting body for web design, has released new draft
guidelines for designing browsers, multimedia players, and other
web software that will be more accessible to people with
disabilities.
The guidelines, named the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines
1.0, complement a pair of existing W3C guidelines on making web
content accessible. These are the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 Recommendation which explains to authors how
to create accessible web content, and the Authoring Tool
Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 1.0 Recommendation which explains
to software developers how to design authoring tools that are
accessible to authors with disabilities, and that produce
accessible Web content.
The guidelines for designers of user agents state the problems
which should be considered when taking into account disabled web
access. These problems are given three levels of priority, with
priority 3 problems being those which, if remedied, would be
useable by a disabled person, priority 2 problems being those which
make it very difficult for disabled users to access the web, and
priority 1 problems those which could prevent a disabled person
using a feature altogether.
Among the principle concerns of the guidelines is the use of the
keyboard by disabled users and ensuring that users can interact
with the user agent through a variety of input/output devices such
as full pointing device support or full voice support.
In the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act contains rules on
making sites reasonably accessible by the disabled and all UK sites
should comply, though few actually meet the recommended levels. To
date, the provisions, which came into force in 1999, have not been
enforced. The W3C guidelines are often referred to as an example of
best practice.
