• Home
• Accessibility
• How to ..
• Accessibility Test
• Audit Services
• WAI 'A'
• WAI 'AA'
• WAI 'AAA'
• Our Audit Service
• Roll of Honour
• Useful Links
• About Us

WAI 'AA' 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 2 or 'AA' classification is an area where you must satisfy all checkpoints, having first achieved all the Priority 1 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 2 (General)

• Ensure that foreground and background colour combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having colour deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen. [Priority 2 for images, Priority 3 for text] (complies with section 2.2)
  
• When an appropriate markup language exists, use markup rather than images to convey information (section 3.1)
  
• Create documents that validate to published formal grammars (section 3.2)
  
• Use style sheets to control layout and presentation (section 3.3)
  
• Use relative rather than absolute units in markup language attribute values and style sheet property values (section 3.4)
  
• Use header elements to convey document structure and use them according to specification (section 3.5)
  
• Mark up lists and list items properly (section 3.6)
  
• Mark up quotations. Do not use quotation markup for formatting effects such as indentation (section 3.7)
  
• Ensure that dynamic content is accessible or provide an alternative presentation or page (section 6.5)
  
• Until user agents allow users to control blinking, avoid causing content to blink (i.e. change presentation at a regular rate, such as turning on and off) (section 7.2)
  
• Until user agents provide the ability to stop the refresh, do not create periodically auto-refreshing pages (section 7.4)
  
• Until user agents provide the ability to stop auto-redirect, do not use markup to redirect pages automatically. Instead, configure the server to perform redirects (section 7.5)
  
• Until user agents allow users to turn off spawned windows, do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user (section 10.1)
  
• Use W3C technologies when they are available and appropriate for a task and use the latest versions when supported (section 11.1)
  
• Avoid deprecated features of W3C technologies (section 11.2)
  
• Divide large blocks of information into more manageable groups where natural and appropriate (section 12.3)
  
• Clearly identify the target of each link (section 13.1)
  
• Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites (section 13.2)
  
• Provide information about the general layout of a site (e.g. a site map or table of contents) (section 13.3)
  
• Use navigation mechanisms in a consistent manner (section 13.4)

Priority 2 (Tables)

• Do not use ts for layout unless the table makes sense when linearised. Otherwise, if the table does not make sense, provide an alternative equivalent (which may be a linearised version) (section 5.3)
  
• If a table is used for layout, do not use any structural markup for the purpose of visual formatting (section 5.4)

Priority 2 (Frames)

• Describe the purpose of frames and how frames relate to each other if it is not obvious by frame titles alone (section 12.2)

Priority 2 (Forms)

• Until user agents support explicit associations between labels and form controls, for all form controls with implicitly associated labels, ensure that the label is properly positioned (section 10.2)
  
• Associate labels explicitly with their controls (section 12.4)

Priority 2 (Applets and scripts)

• For scripts and applets, ensure that event handlers are input device-independent (section 6.4)
  
• Until user agents allow users to freeze moving content, avoid movement in pages (section 7.3)
  
• Make programmatic elements such as scripts and applets directly accessible or compatible with assistive technologies [Priority 1 if functionality is important and not presented elsewhere, otherwise Priority 2.] (section 8.1)
  
• Ensure that any element that has its own interface can be operated in a device-independent manner (section 9.2)
  
• For scripts, specify logical event handlers rather than device-dependent event handlers (section 9.3)

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