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Creating Accessible LibGuides

This guide presents information about how to create and format content in LibGuides to reach as many students as possible, including those using assistive technologies.

Introduction

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops "protocols and guidelines that ensure the long-term growth" of the World Wide Web (W3C Mission). The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 provides recommendations to make Web content accessible to all users. 

The guidelines in this LibGuide are based on the WCAG 2.2 version. A WCAG 3.0 version is under review, which will impact the recommendations in the future.

The 5 Sections

The WCAG 2.2 guidelines are divided into five sections. Note: these sections are not related to the five categories used in this guide. You will find criterion from all sections spread across the five web content and functions categories.

The first four WCAG sections define how users interact with web content and the final section discusses how website authors can follow the guidelines and criteria.

The WCAG 2.2 sections :

  1. Perceivable - The webpage must be presented in a way that users can perceive.
  2. Operable - User must be able to operate interface components and navigation. 
  3. Understandable - Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable.
  4. Robust - The information and programming of a web site should be created to reach as many people as possible, including people who use assistive technologies.
  5. Conformance - This section lists requirements for conformance to WCAG 2.2, how to make an optional conformance claim, and what it means to be accessibility supported.

Guidelines and Success Criterion

The five sections are broken up into guidelines, which are further subdivided into Success Criterion. Each criterion is labelled as Level A, Level AA or Level AAA. The levels refer to the conformance level (the adherence to the requirements), with Level A being the lowest level of conformance and Level AAA the highest. A webpage must adhere to every criterion of a certain level to claim conformance to that level. 

Success criterion at different levels are often related to each other. The checklist therefore may have items that appear to be the same, but the higher the level the stricter the standard. 

Attribution

"Copyright © 2020 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio, Beihang). This software or document includes material copied from or derived from Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2."