Comments on: Video: Introduction to WCAG 2

By: Leanne Yee

Leanne Yee — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:01:33 +0000

Thank you so much for this! For the past week I have been very slowly and very painstakingly reading through the WCAG2 Guidelines and wondering how on earth I was going to get everyone in my company understanding this and committing to it if I had such difficulty myself. So I really appreciate getting some insight from how other companies are approaching it.
As a Developer I find your strategy to move away from the “checkbox mentality” very interesting, and it would make our lives dramatically easier if we didn’t have the somewhat unfeasible pressure of having to check every guideline for every page just so we could put a little A, AA or AAA badge on the site!
Unfortunately, people like things to be measurable and the different levels of Accessibility do just that. So I can imagine a little bit of an uphill journey when trying to get people (clients and colleagues alike) to move away from focussing on this.
I guess at the end of the day all we can do is understand the guidelines to the best of our ability, incorporate them into our builds and if somebody complains that something is inaccessibile, address it then.

By: Ryan Behrman

Ryan Behrman — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:41:05 +0000

Great talk. I'm a little concerned about the "understandable" section where you talk about users initiating actions. We develop e-commerce sites for fashion retail and in order to keep the users in the sales funnel and prevent them from having to keep using the back button we have rollover tooltips that contain information on the various parts of the clothing apparel as they are moused over (or on focus for keyboard users). Does the user have to expressly click on each part of the apparel for this to be compliant with WCAG2?

By: Frank Harrison

Frank Harrison — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:33:34 +0000

Thanks Paul – good stuff!
Does anyone know of anywhere to download the WCAG2 guidelines? I can only seem to find online versions and would be useful for sitting on trains etc…

By: Jonathon Baker

Jonathon Baker — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:27:59 +0000

Great presentation, I actually had a job interview, and managed to remember a few things about accessibility from here that I managed to slip in. The sound quality didn't bother me too much as I've listened to enough bad punk bands to learn how to filter it out! But I will look into this subject more.

By: Clive Walker

Clive Walker — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:08:15 +0000

I found WCAG2 difficult to understand but your presentation made it much clearer. Great work! I'd like to make a point about the 'check box mentality' that you mentioned for WCAG1. I see what you are saying about accessibility being driven by user experience and not by check boxes or accessibility badges. However, when I first read about website accessibility some years ago, I found the check box approach immensely useful because it greatly helped my understanding of the process. Maybe this is 'my bad' but I would never have made websites with better accessibility if I had not been able to check a few boxes. It helped because it seemed to me to be a pragmatic approach.

By: Sam Barnes

Sam Barnes — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:54:13 +0000

Hey, the audio pain to my ears was preferable to the painful bleeding eyes and brain I seemed to suffer each time I attempted to read WCAG 2.0 online... cheers as always Mr. Boag.

By: Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:07:42 +0000

Thanks Paul
Found the presentation really useful, cheers for putting it up.
I always enjoy these little insights into how companies like yours work. Would love to see more Headscape meetings like this actually.

By: Andrew Cairns

Andrew Cairns — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:18:31 +0000

Looking forward to it! :)

By: Paul Boag

Paul Boag — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:52:45 +0000

Yeah like I said I nearly didn't bother posting it because of the poor audio. It was all a bit of a rush unfortunately. We will cover it properly on the podcast soon.

By: Andrew Cairns

Andrew Cairns — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:17:38 +0000

yeah, the audio can get rough – and i had headphones on !! :)
but thanks for sharing!