Improving Web Accessibility In Government Websites: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines



As part of a continuous effort to reach out to citizens, the Government has adopted as a best practice the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The adoption came after web accessibility was identified as one of the strategic priorities aimed at providing convenient access to government websites and online services to all segments of the population, including people living with disabilities.

What is Web Content Accessibility Guidelines?
The WCAG is an international standard adopted by governments worldwide, including the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, for the development of websites friendly to people with disabilities.

How does WCAG help people with disabilities?
The WCAG takes into consideration that some users may have certain disabilities or may be operating in contexts very different from what is often taken to be the norm. For e.g., users:

  • May not be able to see, hear, move, or may not be able to process some types of information easily at all (such as the blind, deaf, physically disabled, those accessing the web from a small display area or those using a speech synthesizer or Braille display.
  • May have difficulty reading or comprehending text (such as people with cognitive or learning disabilities).
  • May not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse (such as people on the move or the physically disable using voice browser).
  • May use a text-only screen, a small screen or a slow Internet connection.
  • May not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written.

The Guidelines
The guidelines relate to two main themes: 1) ensuring graceful transformation; and 2) making content understandable and navigable.

The Guidelines include:

  • Providing text equivalents to auditory and visual content
  • Providing non-text (e.g., pictures, videos, and pre-recorded audio) equivalents of text
  • Ensuring that text and graphics are understandable when viewed without colour
  • Using markup and style sheets in the proper manner
  • Using markup that facilitates pronunciation or interpretation of abbreviated or foreign text
  • Ensuring that tables have necessary markup to be transformed by accessible browsers and other user agents
  • Ensuring that pages are accessible even when newer technologies are not supported or are turned off
  • Ensuring that moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating objects or pages may be paused or stopped
  • Using features that can be activated by a variety of devices such as mouse, keyboard, voice, head wand etc.
  • Providing context and orientation information to help users understand complex pages or elements

By adopting the WCAG, we believe that government websites will become more user-friendly, in particular, for people living with disabilities. Having such features will also benefit senior citizens and people who have poor eyesight.

For more information about WCAG, please visit http://www.w3.org/WAI.