Website Accessibility Guide

Becta | Website accessibility guide

Website accessibility guide

Part 4: What guidelines can I use to help ensure that my website is accessible?

This article introduces the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guidelines [

You may have encountered many different schemes and terms applied to accessibility standards, such as:

Bobby [
See It Right [
Section 508 [

All these terms and schemes refer to, or are based around, the WAI guidelines, which provide the most widely accepted set of international guidelines for accessibility. These guidelines (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [ were defined, and are promoted, by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [

Another way of checking out the requirements is to look at the table on the W3Cwebsite [

The WAI guidelines consist of 14 basic statements. Each of these is broken down into a number of more specific checkpoints, which have priority points ranging from 1 to 3:

Priority 1: if a website does not achieve all relevant checkpoints under this category, the website will be impossible to access for one or more groups of users. Successfully addressing all relevant Priority 1 checkpoints is the equivalent of achieving Level A standard.
Priority 2: if a website does not achieve all relevant checkpoints under this category, the website will be difficult to access for one or more groups of users. Successfully addressing all relevant Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints is the equivalent of achieving Level Double A standard.
Priority 3: if a website does not achieve all relevant checkpoints under this category, the website will be somewhat difficult to access for one or more groups of users. Successfully addressing all relevant Priority 1, 2 and 3 checkpoints is the equivalent of achieving Level Triple A standard.

Level A WAI compliance is actually quite straightforward to achieve, and you should aim, at a minimum, to hit this standard. However, websites that achieve Level Double A or Triple A compliance can be confident that they are open to a wider potential audience and less likely to be deemed as not meeting statutory obligations.

The WAI guidelines are explained in detail in Part 7 (for Level A) and Part 8 (for Level Double A) of this guide. For more information, try joining the WAI mailing lists [ and the web forums provided by Accessify[ which may also be another useful source of support. Don't be afraid to ask questions or to search for help, as this is an arena in which everyone is keen to share their knowledge.

Website accessibility standards are constantly changing, and it's important to monitor them regularly to ensure that your site adheres to best practice standards. For example, at the time of writing,
WAI version 2.0[ is available in draft form. The W3C site also regularly updates supporting information and advice about useful accessibility techniques. Joining the WAI mailing lists referenced above will help ensure that you keep up to date with developments in the standards.

Another set of guidelines with an attendant accreditation scheme are the 'SeeIt Right' guidelines [ They are maintained and accredited by the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) and are a common-sense mixture of Level A and Level Double A compliance standards.

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