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.