A11ying with Sanna - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines a guide to the accessibility requirements

WCAG terminology

There is a lot of terminology when it comes to WCAG and accessibility in general. Here are some explanations for common terms:

ARIA

WAI-ARIA refers to the Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications. It is a technical specification written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

WAI-ARIA is a set of attributes that you can add to HTML elements. These attributes communicate role, state, and property semantics to assistive technologies via the accessibility APIs implemented in recent browsers.

Assistive technology

Technologies (software or hardware) that increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities when interacting with computers or computer-based systems.

Examples:

  • screen readers
  • braille displays
  • magnifiers
  • text-to-speech
  • speech recognition
  • alternate keyboards (switches, sip & puff, etc.)
Conformance

Official and approved wording in a specification; holds up in a court of law. In contrast to non-normative, or an informative aid that is often used in explanations or tutorials.

Conformance to a standard means that you meet or satisfy the “requirements” of the standard. A.k.a. “compliance”.

Non-normative

“Non-normative” documents provide guidance and techniques for interpreting and conforming with the normative requirements, but non-normative techniques are not required for conformance.

Non-normative documents provide information about the different ways web technologies need to work with authoring tools, user agents, and assistive technologies.

Non-normative documents may change more frequently than normative documents, to adapt to changing technologies and current best practices.

Normative

“Normative” documents define accessibility practices required for conformance (to a specification).

W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web.

WAI

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative develops standards and support materials to help us understand and implement accessibility.

WCAG

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Developed through the W3C process.

The WCAG documents explain how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities.