Worldwide Accessibility Standards

Worldwide Accessibility Standards.

Generally government websites follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 from the The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They are an international community that develops many open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web.

There are different levels of compliance, and many sites aim for the “AA” standard. A quick guide to meeting the standards is easy to read and follow. Part of the standards have to do with a decent level of visual colour contrast. Many people are colour blind so a colour difference is not enough if the tones are similar. A good colour contract checker tool is “Colorsafe” but there are many other online tools out there, so pick one you like.

Here are some of the other (English) Worldwide Accessibility Standards that I’ve managed to pull together. If you have more links to offer for other countries, post them in the comment section below and I’ll add them to this article.

In many cases, if a government website does not follow their accessibility standards they are in danger of being sued by the public.

Canada

The Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada (TBS) provides the following Accessibility Standard that must be followed for all Federal websites:

Standard on Web Accessibility

European Union

The European Commission Internet Standards Handbook provides:

Standard on Web Accessibility

Germany

The Federal Ministry of the Interior, together with the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs Provides:

Federal Ordinance on Barrier-Free Information Technology. (Barrierefreie Informationstechnik-Verordnung).

Ireland

The Irish National Disability Authority provides the following guidelines for accessible products and services including websites:

Website and Software Accessibility guidelines

 Netherlands

The Netherlands provides:

Guidelines for accessibility and sustainability of government web sites.

New Zealand

The State Services Commission publish:

Web Accessibility Standards 1.0

United Kingdom

The Guidelines for UK government websites provide a comprehensive list of best practices for applying their visual standards. They follow the WCAG Accessibility standards.

They posted an article “Doing the hard work to make accessibility simple” on going beyond the “AA” WCAG Standards.

United States

The Federal government follows Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.The General Services Administration (GSA) maintains a website devoted to Section 508.

Article by: Jonathan Rath
Photo by: Asier_Relampagoestudio