Happy Birthday WCAG — Now You are Twenty!
Posted on May 1, 2019
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This is a post about rules that make it possible for disabled people to use websites. The rules are called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG. On May 5 these rules will be twenty years old. They have changed, but they still help people who make websites make sites that work for everyone.
On May 5, 1999 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) issued a press release announcing the publication of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0. The headline was confident: “WAI Provides Definitive Guidance for Web Access by People with Disabilities.” [Jump to full press release]
Two years earlier the W3C had launched the International Program Office of the Web Accessibility Initiative to “promote and achieve Web functionality for people with disabilities.” WCAG 1.0 made concrete Sir Berners-Lee statement at the WAI launch:
The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect. Tim Berners-Lee
Less that a year after the announcement of WCAG 1.0 Bank of America became the first organization in the United States to sign a web accessibility agreement with its blind [...]