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Being familiar with the expectations placed on you and your apps will make it easier to build them into your work.
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[MUSIC]
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Being familiar with
the expectations placed on you,
0:04
as a developer, will make it easier
to build them into your work.
0:07
In this stage,
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you'll start to understand what we
mean by web accessibility compliance.
0:13
Most of this stage will be
focused on W-C-A-G, or WCAG.
0:18
To be compliant with WCAG, is to build
products that meet certain objective,
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testable criteria.
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Depending on your country, the function
of your website or application, or
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the industry you're in,
compliance may be required by law.
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Even if it's not mandated,
holding your work to an internationally
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recognized standard, will achieve the core
goal of making the web accessible
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to as many people as possible,
no matter their individual circumstances.
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WCAG stands for
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
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And the current version 2.0 was
published in December of 2008.
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It became an ISO Standard in 2012.
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So, you'll see developers from all
over the world leveraging their
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accessibility work
against these guidelines.
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See the teachers notes if you
would like more information
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on the International Organization for
Standardization.
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WCAG is broken up into four principles.
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Web content must be perceivable,
operable, understandable, and robust.
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These principles are used as umbrellas for
12 accessibility guidelines.
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Which are, in turn,
broken up into testable success criteria,
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that span three levels, A, AA, and AAA.
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There's not a great
explanation of these levels put
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forth by the WCAG working group itself.
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But Karl Groves,
a well known web accessibility consultant,
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wrote a solid analysis
of them a few years ago.
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You'll find a link to the article
in question in the teachers notes.
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But I'll give you my synopsis.
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Level A criteria have a large impact
across a wide spectrum of users.
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Your work should pretty much always
meet all Level A success criteria,
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no matter what you're building.
2:10
This is widely considered the bare minimum
for deeming your content accessible.
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Things like providing a text based
alternative to non text context,
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like images.
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Or making sure that the entire site can
be navigated using only a keyboard.
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Level AA criteria also tends to have a big
impact on the accessibility of your work,
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but may not affect quite as many people.
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You should be hitting all
the level AA success criteria, but
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there are some exceptions and
it won't always be feasible.
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These include things like writing headings
and labels to describe the topic and
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purpose of relevant content.
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Level AAA success criteria tend
to be even more specific, and
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will not always be
applicable to every project.
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These criteria often
relate to special cases,
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like providing accessible alternatives
to live audio only content.
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I hope you're ready to dive deeper
into these principles and guidelines.
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It might seem like a ton of
information right now, but
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I promise it's not as
complicated as it sounds.
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By the time we're through,
WCAG won't be nearly as intimidating.
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And you'll be able to use it as a tool
to make your work that much better and
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more accessible.
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