Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

In the UK, 14% of people aged 15-64 years report a difficulty carrying out a basic activity. Across the UK workforce alone:

• 10 million people have hearing difficulties
• 3.8 million people have dexterity issues
• 2 million people have visual impairments
• 1.5 million people have severe or specific learning difficulties
• 600,000 people have epilepsy

Occasionally, clients come to us wondering what we do to make our content accessible. We’re likely to see more of this after new legislation has come in requiring all content delivered in public service to be accessible.

In 1999, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) laid out the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 1.0. These guidelines were designed to make digital content more accessible to those with disability requirements. In 2008, they were upgraded to v2.1, which grouped the initial 14 guidelines into four principles. 

Digital content must be:

• Perceivable
• Operable
• Understandable
• Robust

You may have heard about AA or AAA standards. These standards are a measure of how many people can access the content – ‘A’ is the baseline. Anyone without a physical or intellectual impairment should be able to view and understand the content.

At Learning Pool, we aim for the ‘AA’ standard which means that most people with a physical or intellectual impairment will be able to view and understand the content we produce.

This eBook is a quick and easy guide to the guidelines surrounding accessibility and how we can accommodate them in our learning. Download it now, for free.