This page contains material from a presentation at the WAI Best Practices Exchange
Training in Madrid, Spain in February 2004. It is not intended to
stand-alone; rather, it is primarily provided as reference material for
participants in the training.
Importance of Standards Harmonization
Shawn Lawton Henry, W3C WAI
Last updated: 12 October 2004
Terminology
- Harmonization is adoption of unified international standards for
accessibility
- Fragmentation includes
- Dropped requirements
- Different wording
- Combined requirements
- Additional requirements
- Within national, regional governments; organizations
Why different standards developed
- Discomfort with standard not developed locally
- Belief disability requirements different locally
- Lack of authorized translations
- Often, organizations just want to write own standards
Thought bubbles
- “gee, we never thought about having to revise our standards as
technologies evolve...”
- “gee, we never thought about the authoring tools and evaluation
tools not supporting our standards...”
Impact of fragmentation
On tool developers, Web content developers, organizations, …
- Different guidelines complicate
- Takes more time & effort
- Hurts business case
- End results of same effort are less
- (An excuse)
Authoring tools component
Importance of authoring tools
- Past
- Some “broke” accessibility
- Future
- Meet ATAG
- Make Web developer's job easier
Impact on authoring tools
- Features incorporated based on consistent demand
Similar issues for:
- Evaluation tools
- User agents (browsers, multimedia players…)
- Assistive technologies
Web accessibility standards
- harmonization, benefits
- fragmentation, challenges
Additional harmonization benefits
- Broadly-applicable, re-usable,
- Training materials
- Technical assistance resources
- Promote understanding & acceptance
Path to Standards Harmonization
- WCAG 2.0 as convergence target
- Range of participation
- Meet broadest needs,
Address more advanced technologies
- Easily understood, implemented, translated, tested
- Broad understanding of issues & importance
- Adoptions of unified standard
You can help
- Promote understanding harmonization issues
- Require ATAG-conformant authoring tools
- Participate in WCAG 2.0 in development
- Actively encourage local and national policy to support harmonization
- Ensure ability to "roll forward" onto WCAG 2.0 once
completed”
WAI Resource:
- Why Standards Harmonization is Essential to Web Accessibility