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This specification provides guidelines for designing Web content authoring tools that are more accessible for people with disabilities. An authoring tool that conforms to these guidelines will promote accessibility by providing an accessible authoring interface to authors with disabilities as well as enabling, supporting, and promoting the production of accessible Web content by all authors.
"Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0" (ATAG 2.0) is part of a series of accessibility guidelines published by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
This is a Working Draft that succeeds a Last Call Working Draft. This change in status was requested by the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG) because the issues raised by reviewers during the Last Call period led the working group to make substantial modifications that may require further refinement before proceeding again to Last Call. In particular, the requirements for the accessibility of the authoring interface, which in the Last Call Working Draft strongly depended on an ISO document, have been updated and expanded to remove that dependency. The new authoring interface accessibility requirements (Part A) that have resulted, draw instead from the concepts in WCAG 2.0 and UAAG 1.0.
The AUWG encourages feedback about this Working Draft. In particular:
Please send your comments by 21 December 2005 to w3c-wai-au@w3.org. The archives for this list are publicly available.
Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.
The AUWG intends to publish ATAG 2.0 as a W3C Recommendation. Until that time Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (ATAG 1.0) is the stable, referenceable version. This Working Draft does not supercede ATAG 1.0.
This document was produced under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. The Working Group maintains a public list of patent disclosures relevant to this document; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) with respect to this specification should disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
This document has been produced as part of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The goals of the AUWG are discussed in the Working Group charter. The AUWG is part of the WAI Technical Activity.
This document specifies requirements that improve the accessibility of Web content authoring tools. This document includes the following:
These guidelines cover a wide range of recommendations for assisting authoring tool software developers in making authoring tools, as well as the content that the authoring tools generate, more accessible to all potential Web content end users and authors, especially people with disabilities .
These guidelines have been written to address the requirements of many different audiences, including, but not limited to: policy makers, technical administrators, and those who develop/manage content. Every attempt has been made to make this document as readable and usable as possible for that diverse audience while still retaining the accuracy and clarity needed in a technical specification.
ATAG 2.0 defines an "authoring tool" as: any software, or collection of software components, that authors use to create or modify Web content for publication. A collection of software components are any software products used together (e.g. base tool and plug-in) or separately (e.g. markup editor, image editor, and validation tool), regardless of whether there has been any formal collaboration between the developers of the products.
To illustrate the range of this term as it is used in these guidelines, an authoring function categorization scheme has been developed. The scheme is used primarily within the Techniques document [ATAG20-TECHS] to call out examples that may be of interest to developers of particular types of tools. It is important to note that many authoring tools will include authoring functions that fall into one or more of the categories (e.g. many HTML editors have both code-level and WYSIWYG authoring functions):
Code-level Authoring Functions: Authors have full control over all aspects of the resulting Web content that have bearing on the final outcome. This covers, but is not limited to plain text editing, as this category also covers the manipulation of symbolic representations that are sufficiently fine-grained to allow the author the same freedom of control as plain text editing (e.g. graphical tag placeholders).
Examples: text editors, text editors enhanced with graphical tags, etc.WYSIWYG ("What-you-see-is-what-you-get") Authoring Functions: Authors have control over entities that closely resemble the final appearance and behavior of the resulting Web content.
Examples: rendered document editors, bitmap graphics editors, etc.Object Oriented Authoring Functions: Authors have control over functional abstractions of the low level aspects of the resulting Web content.
Examples: timelines, waveforms, vector-based graphic editors, objects which represent web implementations for graphical widgets (menus, etc.) etc.Indirect Authoring Functions: Authors have control over only high-level parameters related to the automated production of the resulting Web content. This may include interfaces that assist the author to create and organize Web content without the author having control over the markup, structure, or programming implementation.
Examples: content management systems, site building wizards, site management tools, courseware, weblogging tools, content aggregators, conversion tools, model-based authoring tools, etc.
The guiding principle of ATAG 2.0 is that:
Everyone should have the ability to create and access Web content.
Authoring tools play a crucial role in achieving this principle because the design of the tool's authoring tool user interface determines who can access the tool as a Web content author and the accessibility of the resulting Web content determines who can be an end user of that Web content.
As an introduction to accessible authoring tool design, consider that the authors and end users of Web content may be using the tool and its output in contexts that are very different from that which you may regard as typical. For example, authors and end users may:
For more information, see "How People with Disabilities Use the Web" [PWD-USE-WEB].
Designing authoring tools for accessibility will have benefits for authors and end users beyond those listed in these various disability-related contexts. For example, a person may have average hearing, but still require a captions for audio information due to a noisy workplace. Similarly, a person working in an eyes-busy environment may require an audio alternative to information they cannot view.
The guidelines are divided into two parts, each reflecting a key aspect of accessible authoring tools. Part A includes guidelines and associated checkpoints related to ensuring accessibility of the authoring tool user interface. Part B contains guidelines and checkpoints related to ensuring support for creation of accessible Web content by the tool. The guidelines both parts include the following:
Each checkpoint listed under a guideline is intended to be sufficiently specific to be verifiable, while being sufficiently general to allow developers the freedom to use the most appropriate strategies to satisfy it. Each checkpoint definition includes the following parts. Some parts are normative (i.e., relate to conformance); others are informative only:
ATAG 2.0 is part of a series of accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The relationship between these documents explained in "Essential Components of Web Accessibility" [COMPONENTS].
The relationship that is of particular importance to ATAG 2.0 is the normative dependency that ATAG 2.0 has on "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)" as the determinant of what constitutes accessible Web content.
ATAG 2.0 depends on WCAG to act as a benchmark for judging the accessibility of Web content and Web-based authoring interfaces and also to define the terms "Accessible Web Content" and "Accessible Authoring Interface".
At the time of publication, version 1.0 of WCAG is a W3C Recommendation [WCAG10], and a second version of the guidelines is under development [WCAG20]. @@revisit this when WCAG becomes a recommendation@@
Note that within the guidelines section of ATAG 2.0, references are made to WCAG without an associated version number. This has been done to allow developers to select, for the conformance profile, whichever version of WCAG is most appropriate for the circumstances of a given authoring tool. The Working Group does recommend considering the following factors when deciding on which WCAG version to use:
ATAG 2.0 allows authoring tools to claim conformance to one of three conformance levels. The level achieved depends on the priority of the checkpoints that the authoring tool has satisfied.
Figure 1: A graphical view of the requirements of the ATAG 2.0 Conformance Levels.
Description: A graphic that illustrates the levels of conformance as they are explained in the text of the conformance level section. The graphic is a table with four rows and three columns. The header row labels are "Ladder of ATAG 2.0 Conformance Levels", "Regular Priority Checkpoints" and "Relative Priority Checkpoints". The data rows are labeled Level 'Triple-A' (highest) , Level 'Double-A', and Level 'A' (lowest). Bars superimposed across the rows demonstrate that in order to meet each higher level, additional regular priority checkpoints must be met as well as increasing levels of relative priority checkpoints as described in the conformance levels section above.
Each checkpoint has been assigned a priority level that indicates the importance of the checkpoint in satisfying the guideline under which the checkpoint appears. The priority of a checkpoint determines whether that checkpoint must be met in order for an authoring tool to achieve a particular conformance level. There are three levels of "regular priority" checkpoints as well as a special class of "relative priority" checkpoints that rely on WCAG as a benchmark for determining what is considered accessible Web content.
The importance of the relative checkpoints depends on the requirements defined by whichever version of WCAG the evaluator has defined in the conformance profile. These checkpoints can be met to one of three levels:
A conformance claim (with or without an accompanying ATAG 2.0 conformance icon) is an assertion by a claimant that an authoring tool has satisfied the requirements of a chosen ATAG 2.0 conformance profile. The claim must be supported by a listing of conformance details.
The conformance profile in the conformance claim must include the following:
The Content Type-Specific WCAG Benchmark document(s) required for conformance profile must include the following:
It is important to note that:
There are currently no conformance icons available for this working draft. If it becomes a Recommendation, it is expected that there will be conformance icons like those available for ATAG 1.0.
Note: The requirement in this section apply to all parts of the authoring tool interface except for the content view of built-in preview features (see Checkpoint A.2.9 for more information).
Rationale: Authors must be able to have access to authoring tool functionality that is implemented as Web content.
Note: For non-Web-based authoring tools, this is a relatively straightforward requirement, likely covering only a few areas of the interface (i.e. Web-based help features, etc.). However, for most Web-based authoring tools the requirement will cover the majority of functionality in the tool and overlap many of the other requirements in Part A of the guidelines.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.0.1
Success Criteria:
A.1.1 Provide text alternatives for all non-text content in the user interface. [Priority 1]
Rationale: People who have difficulty perceiving non-text content can often access the same information if it is conveyed using a text alternative (by assistive technology or braille, for example).
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.1.1
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: People who have difficulty accessing or interpreting multimedia-supported information in the authoring interface can have the information made available to them by other means. For example, people who are deaf or have a hearing loss can access auditory information through captions, and people who are blind or have low vision, as well as those with cognitive disabilities, who have difficulty interpreting visually what is happening, can receive audio descriptions of visual information.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.1.2
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: Some authors require alternative display configurations to use the authoring interface.
Note: The success criteria for this checkpoint are based on the capabilities of platforms (e.g. operating systems, browsers, GUI toolkits, etc. as defined in the conformance profile), however developers are free to provide additional configuration.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.1.3
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: Authors may require a set of display preferences to view and control the document that is different from the display styles that they want to define for the published document (e.g. a particular text-background combination that differs from the published version).
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.1.4
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Separating content and structure from presentation allows user interfaces of authoring tools to be presented differently to meet the needs and constraints of different authors without losing any of the information or structure. For example, information can be presented via speech or braille (text) that was originally intended to be presented visually. It can also facilitate automatic emphasis of structure or more efficient navigation. All of these can benefit authors with cognitive, physical, hearing, and visual disabilities.
Success Criteria @@placeholders - all success criteria to be revised@@:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: Some individuals have difficulty manipulating graphical input devices such as a mouse or trackball. Providing alternate means of navigating the user interface that does not rely on such devices provides an accommodation for individuals with limited mobility or those with visual disabilities who cannot rely on hand eye coordination for navigating the user interface.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.1
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: Authors who have limited mobility require quick access to the actions that they use frequently.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.2
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Authors who have difficulty typing, operating the mouse, or processing information can be prevented from using systems with short time limits.
Note: Some time limits may be imposed by external systems. This checkpoint only applies to time limits within the control of the authoring tool.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.3
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: Flashing can cause seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.4
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: It is often efficient to make use of the structure that may be inherent within Web content in order to navigate editing views and perform edits.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.5
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Search functions within the editing views facilitate author navigation of content as it is being authored by allowing the author to move focus quickly to arbitrary points in the content. Including the capability to search within text equivalents of rendered non-text content increases the efficiency of the search function.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.6
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Web-based authoring tools may make use of the find function of the browsers to help perform the searches.
Rationale: Authors who have difficulty making fine movements may be prone to making unintended actions. All authors benefit from the ability to easily recover from mistakes.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.7
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Web-based authoring tools may rely on the undo function of the browser to perform the undo function for editing actions that do not involve server communication (e.g. typing in a text area). Therefore, all Web-based interface components, that meet Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint as long as the user agent(s) specified in the conformance profile have the ability to perform at least one level of text entry undo.
Rationale: When a large number of configuration settings are available, authors working on shared systems benefit from the ability to save and later reload a personal settings file.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.8
Success Criteria:
Rationale: The workflow of many authoring tools includes periodically checking a preview of how content will appear to end users in a browser. Authors with disabilities need to have access to a preview so that they can check all aspects of their work (i.e. not just the accessibility of that work). For this reason the preview needs to be as, but not more, accessible than the target browser(s).
Note 1: This requirement serves, for the preview feature(s) only, in lieu of the other user interface accessibility requirements in Part A.
Note 2: In addition, it is expected that the operation of the preview accessibility features will be constrained by the accessibility and/or completeness of the content. For example, an incomplete document may not be renderable by the preview.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.2.9
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Authors are often familiar with accessibility conventions employed by the other applications built on a platform. Departures from those conventions have the tendency to disorient authors by creating an unfamiliar environment.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.3.1
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: Authors who may become disoriented easily will have less difficulty when consistent and predictable responses to author actions are provided. In general, consistent interfaces will benefit all authors to some degree.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.3.2
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
Rationale: While intuitive authoring interface design is valuable to many authors, some authors may still not be able to understand or be able to operate the authoring interface without thorough documentation. For instance, an author who is blind may not find a graphical authoring interface intuitive without supporting documentation.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.3.3
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Assistive technologies (e.g. screen readers, screen magnifiers, etc.) used by many authors with disabilities rely on software applications to provide data and control via prescribed communication protocols.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint A.4.1
Success Criteria:
For Web-Based Interface Components: Meeting Checkpoint A.0.1 will serve to meet this checkpoint.
The creation of accessible content is dependent on the actions of the tool and the author. This guideline delineates the responsibilities that rest exclusively with the tool.
Rationale: Content types with published content type-specific WCAG benchmark documents facilitate the creation of Web content that can be assessed for accessibility with WCAG.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint B.1.1
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Unrecognized markup may include recent technologies that have been added to enhance accessibility and should be preserved during conversions or transformations. Accessibility information should also be preserved.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint B.1.2
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Authoring tools that automatically generate content that does not conform to WCAG are a source of accessibility problems.
Note: WCAG includes a markup validity requirement.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint B.1.3
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Pre-authored content, such as templates, images, and videos, is often included with authoring tools for use by the author. When this content conforms to WCAG, it is more convenient for authors and more easily reused.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint B.1.4
Success Criteria:
This guideline requires that authoring tools must promote accessible authoring practices within the tool as well as smoothly integrate any functions added to meet the other requirements in this document.
Note: In addition to the normative requirements of this guideline, implementers should consider one other issue: the integration of accessibility features, such as prompting, checking and repair with the "look-and-feel" of other features of the authoring tool. This type of integration has the potential to:
However, whenever new features are introduced into an authoring tool, striking the right design balance between the similarity with existing features and the provision of new functionality is often more of an art than a science.
Rationale: Authors are most likely to use the first and easiest option for a given authoring task.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint B.3.1
Success Criteria:
Rationale: If the features that support accessible authoring are difficult to find and activate, they are less likely to be used. Ideally, these features should be turned on by default.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint B.3.2
Success Criteria:
Rationale: Accessible design as an afterthought or separate process is much more onerous and therefore costly than when accessibility is considered from the start. If the authoring tool supports the author in considering accessibility before and/or during the authoring process it is more likely that accessible authoring practices will become a common practice. This is analogous to internationalization, which is much easier when it is considered from the beginning rather than handled last.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint B.3.3
Success Criteria:
Rationale: A configurable tool is more likely to be adaptable to the work habits of more authors.
Techniques: Implementation Techniques for Checkpoint B.3.4
Success Criteria:
This glossary is normative. However, some terms (or parts of explanations of terms) may not have an impact on conformance.
For the latest version of any W3C specification please consult the list of W3C Technical Reports at http://www.w3.org/TR/. Some documents listed below may have been superseded since the publication of this document.
Note: In this document, bracketed labels such as "[HTML4]" link to the corresponding entries in this section. These labels are also identified as references through markup. Normative references are highlighted and identified through markup.
There are two recommended ways to refer to the "Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0" (and to W3C documents in general):
In almost all cases, references (either by name or by link) should be to a specific version of the document. W3C will make every effort to make this document indefinitely available at its original address in its original form. The top of this document includes the relevant catalog metadata for specific references (including title, publication date, "this version" URI, editors' names, and copyright information).
An XHTML 1.0 [XHTML10] paragraph including a reference to this specific document might be written:
@@add during publishing@@
For very general references to this document (where stability of content and anchors is not required), it may be appropriate to refer to the latest version of this document.
Other sections of this document explain how to build a conformance claim.
A document appears in this section if at least one reference to the document appears in a checkpoint success criteria.
The active participants of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group who authored this document were: Tim Boland (National Institute for Standards and Technology), Barry A. Feigenbaum (IBM), Karen Mardahl (STC), Matt May (Team Contact, W3C), Greg Pisocky (Adobe), Jan Richards (Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto), Roberto Scano (IWA/HWG), and Jutta Treviranus (Chair of the working group, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto)
Many thanks to the following people who have contributed to the AUWG through review and comment: Kynn Bartlett, Giorgio Brajnik, Judy Brewer, Wendy Chisholm, Daniel Dardailler, Geoff Deering, Katie Haritos-Shea, Kip Harris, Phill Jenkins, Len Kasday, Marjolein Katsma, William Loughborough, Charles McCathieNevile, Matthias Müller-Prove, Liddy Nevile, Graham Oliver, Wendy Porch, Bob Regan, Chris Ridpath, Gregory Rosmaita, Heather Swayne, Gregg Vanderheiden, Carlos Velasco, and Jason White.
This document would not have been possible without the work of those who contributed to ATAG 1.0.
This publication has been funded in part with Federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under contract number ED05CO0039. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
