En el blog del W3C tenemos el anuncio de la publicación de WCAG 2.1: WCAG 2.1 IS A W3C RECOMMENDATION.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 is now a W3C Recommendation. This is an evolution of W3C’s accessibility guidance, including expansion of mobile, low vision, and cognitive and learning provisions. It maintains W3C’s accessibility guidance, while maintaining W3C’s standard of implementable, technology neutral, objectively testable and universally applicable accessibility guidance.
¿Cuáles son las principales novedades?
For users of mobile devices, WCAG 2.1 provides updated guidance including support for user interactions using touch, handling more complex gestures, and for avoiding unintended activation of an interface. For users with low vision, WCAG 2.1 extends contrast requirements to graphics, and introduces new requirements for text and layout customization to support better visual perception of web content and controls. For users with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities, WCAG 2.1 improvements include a requirement to provide information about the specific purpose of input controls, as well as additional requirements to support timeouts due to inactivity. This can help many users better understand web content and how to successfully interact with it.
¿Qué pasará con WCAG 2.0?
WCAG 2.0 remains a W3C Recommendation. It was designed to be a highly stable, technology-agnostic standard, with informative supporting resources. The Working Group has taken care to maintain backwards compatibility of WCAG 2.1 with WCAG 2.0. All the criteria from WCAG 2.0 are included in WCAG 2.1, so web sites that conform to WCAG 2.1 will also conform to WCAG 2.0. As with WCAG 2.0, WCAG 2.1 will be supported by an extensive library of implementation techniques and educational materials, including Understanding WCAG 2.1 and Techniques for WCAG 2.1.
¿Y qué versión deberíamos usar?
W3C encourages organizations and individuals to use WCAG 2.1 in web content and applications, and to consider WCAG 2.1 when updating or developing new policies, in order to better address the needs of more web and mobile users with disabilities.
¿Y cuál es el futuro a corto plazo de WCAG?
WCAG 2.1 provides important and timely guidance but is still only a step—the Working Group expects to develop another dot-release, WCAG 2.2, to expand the new coverage even further. WCAG 2.2 may be developed under a similar timeline and requirements set than WCAG 2.1 was, though we plan to refine the process to address process challenges experienced during the development of WCAG 2.1.
¿Y cuál es el futuro a largo plazo de WCAG?
In addition to a further dot-release of WCAG 2, the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has been working in parallel on a more major revision to accessibility guidelines, which would not have the same structure as WCAG 2. Beyond web content, these new guidelines are intended to incorporate guidance for user agents and other tools so requirements that depend on tool support are more clear for authors, and address issues of conformance and testability in a different way from WCAG 2. This is a major multi-year project, which is the reason additional updates to WCAG 2 are needed in the meantime.
¿Y qué pasará en España y otros países?
Para eso el W3C no tiene respuesta. El W3C anima a usar la nueva versión, pero las leyes indican que se debe cumplir WCAG 2.0. Incluso, todavía puede quedar algún país con leyes que hagan referencia a WCAG 1.0.
No obstante, como indica el W3C, WCAG 2.1 se ha desarrollado para que sea compatible hacia atrás y se conservan todos los criterios de conformidad de WCAG 2.0. Por tanto, si se desarrolla un sitio web que cumpla WCAG 2.1 también se estará cumpliendo WCAG 2.0.