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WAI 'A' Compliance

Web accessibility is all about making your website accessible to all web users (whether they are disabled or not), and regardless of the technology they are using.

 

The Priority 1 or 'A' classification is an area where you must satisfy all checkpoints. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.

Priority 1 (General)

• Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g. via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content). This includes: images, graphical representations of text (including symbols), image map regions, animations (e.g. animated GIFs), applets and programmatic objects, ascii art, frames, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, graphical buttons, sounds (played with or without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video (complies with section 1.1)
  
• Ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available without colour, for example from context or markup (section 2.1)
  
• Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document's text and any text equivalents (e.g. captions) (section 4.1)
  
• Organise documents so they may be read without style sheets. For example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document (section 6.1)
  
• Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes (section 6.2)
  
• Until user agents allow users to control flickering, avoid causing the screen to flicker (section 7.1)
  
• Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content (section 14.1)

Priority 1 (Images and image maps)

• Provide redundant text links for each active region of a server-side image map (section 1.2)
  
• Provide client-side image maps instead of server-side image maps except where the regions cannot be defined with an available geometric shape (section 9.1)

Priority 1 (Tables)

• For data tables, identify row and column headers (section 5.1)
  
• For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells (section 5.2)

Priority 1 (Frames)

• Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation (section 12.1)

Priority 1 (Applets and scripts)

• Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page (section 6.3)

Priority 1 (Multimedia)

• Until user agents can automatically read aloud the text equivalent of a visual track, provide an auditory description of the important information of the visual track of a multimedia presentation (section 1.3)
  
• For any time-based multimedia presentation (e.g. a movie or animation), synchronise equivalent alternatives (e.g. captions or auditory descriptions of the visual track) with the presentation (section 1.4)

And finally ...

• If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page (section 11.4)

 

You can also check whether you comply with Priority 2, or 'AA' accessibility. Priority 1 is the minimum, but your site could still be inaccessible in places even at level 'A'.

 

Our evaluation of WAI 'A' audited sites provides the website owner with the logo shown here: