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I'm not familiarized with the english accessibility specifications.

I know with RGAA in France we can't use HTML5 because we must be compatible with IE6 (no-js), and the most part of screen readers are based on it.

RGAA and accessiweb Silver are both inspired by WCAG 2.0 Level AA, so I suppose I can't use HTML5 but I just want to be sure.

Thanks.

Val Entin
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1 Answers1

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WCAG is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and isn't tied to any particular technology. Rather it is a

wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible.

Furthermore:

Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

Just like any other technology for presenting content, HTML5 can either conform to or break WCAG Guidelines.

For example, this example HTML5 document fragment can be considered "WCAG Compliant":

<h1>My page</h1>
<h2>Contents</h2>
<ul>
    <li>Chapter 1 - The beginning</li>
    <li>Chapter 2 - The continuation</li>
</ul>

The content is semantically laid out, and is not out of order.

Contrast that with this document fragment:

<span class="title">My page</span>
<span class="chapterHead">Contents</span>
<table>
    <tr><td>Chapter 1</td><td>The beginning</td>
    <tr><td>Chapter 2</td><td>The continuation</td>
</table>

Although valid HTML, this is less likely to pass WCAG Compliance as the headings are no longer marked up as such, and the table contents is now buried in a table.

WCAG is a set of Content Guidelines

The important thing to remember is that WCAG lays out a series of rules for how you create your content, and while it gives examples of how to meet this guidelines in some technologies, such as HTML5 or PDF, it can be applied to any electronic document format.

Note regarding IE6

Given that Microsoft themselves have marked Internet Explorer 6 for death, the percentage of people in France who use IE6 is about 0.5%, so trying to design content for it is cost and time prohibitive. Certainly, design for a fail-safe Javascript-less and CSS-less environment for screen readers and the like, but this can easily be tested in any major browser now-days.

Andy
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  • Thank you Lego, for your response. Happy to use HTML5 instead XHTML 1.1 :) – Val Entin Sep 23 '13 at 07:04
  • I would like to ask you one more question Lego, I'm currently working for an Australian institution who must be valid WCAG Level AA for their web services, do you know which company/institution makes the verifications/validations and if they have some additional specificities relative for Australia like we have in France or Europe ? – Val Entin Sep 23 '13 at 07:21
  • @ValEntin I think my email is visible on my profile, if not, it lists my personal website which has all many ways to contact me. Feel free to get in touch if its a very specific question. Alternately if its a question others may beneift from I'd be happy to write a more detailed answer to a separate question. –  Sep 23 '13 at 08:15