Introduction to WCAG AA self-study training course
The aim of this course is to introduce you to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Priority 1 and Priority 2 checkpoints.
Articles, techniques and tutorials are provided for each checkpoint. A hands-on assignment is set at the end of each section.
On completion of this course you should have an awareness of all Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints, and be able to apply techniques to ensure a website passes WCAG 'A' and 'AA'.
Pre-requisites
Familiarity with the use of a computer, mouse, keyboard, and a text editor is assumed. The exercises require an understanding of basic HTML.
Background reading material:
- What is an accessible Website? an article by Jim Byrne.
- Introduction to HTML by Ian Graham:
- Guidelines for Building an Accessible Web Site. (You should read up until the first section, i.e., until the start of the Guidelines)
- Interview with Aaron Leventhal, leader of Mozilla Accessibility.
- Mothers of Invention by Jade Reidy. An article showing that many inventions sprang from attempts to meet the access needs of disabled people.
- World Wide Web Consortium: How People with Disabilities Use the Web
Reference material
W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
Download the tutorial website files
A tutorial website has been created to provide 'real world' examples. Markup from the tutorial site is used in many of the exercises. The tutorial website demonstrates bad practice, and contains accessibility and markup problems.
As you work your way through the tutorial you will learn how the problems illustrated by the tutorial website can be fixed.
Download the sample website containing the tutorial files, from support files.
The tutorial website is also available online.
A note about editing the tutorial files
Do not use MS Word or Office to edit the files in the tutorial exercises, as Word may add additional text to your file. Use a 'text editor' such as BBedit on Mac or notepad (or Textpad) on PC. You can use an HTML editor on any platform as long as it provides you with the facility to edit the HTML source.
- Mac: SimpleText, Bbedit, TextWrangler
- PC: Notepad, Textpad.