WCAG 2.1 is now a candid recommendation

Accessibility Guidelines Working Group of W3C has published WCAG 2.1 as a candid recommendation (CR). Purpose of CR is to ensure that standard can be implemented. Results of this exercise will be made available on WCAG 2.1 Implementation report once it’s completed. Working group plans to complete this by June 2018.

What’s new in WCAG 2.1

Addresses more accessibility requirements of people with cognitive disabilities, people with low vision and improves accessibility of mobile. Features of WCAG 2.1 are:

WCAG 2.1 extends WCAG 2.0 by adding new success criteria, definitions to support them, guidelines to organize the additions, and a couple of additions to the conformance section. This additive approach helps to make it clear that sites which conform to WCAG 2.1 also conform to WCAG 2.0, thereby meeting conformance obligations that are specific to WCAG 2.0. The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group recommends that sites adopt WCAG 2.1 as their new conformance target, even if formal obligations mention WCAG 2.0, to provide improved accessibility and to anticipate future policy changes.

The following Success Criteria are new in WCAG 2.1:

• 1.3.4 Identify Common Purpose
• 1.3.5 Identify Purpose
• 1.4.10 Reflow
• 1.4.11 Non-Text Contrast
• 1.4.12 Text Spacing
• 1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus
• 2.2.6 Timeouts
• 2.2.7 Animation from Interactions
• 2.4.11 Character Key Shortcuts
• 2.4.12 Label in Name
• 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures
• 2.5.2 Pointer Cancellation
• 2.5.3 Target Size
• 2.5.4 Concurrent Input Mechanisms
• 2.6.1 Motion Actuation
• 2.6.2 Orientation
• 3.2.6 Status Changes

Many of these success criteria reference new terms that have also been added to the glossary and form part of the normative requirements of the success criteria.

In the Conformance section, a third note about page variants has been added to Full Pages, and an option for machine-readable metadata added to Optional Components of a Conformance Claim.

What we should do

Apply WCAG 2.1 to our day-to-day work and report when a success criterion cannot be implemented. Do file an issue on Github or write to Chairs of Accessibility Guidelines Working Group.

Let’s do some exiting work! Sincere thanks to everyone involved in building accessibility standards.