On April 24, 2018, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international community that develops web standards, published their Proposed Recommendation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. This update will be “backwards compatible” with WCAG 2.0, which is the current accepted industry web accessibility standard, but will also include additions that will address the accessibility voids relating to mobile devices and the digital needs of users with cognitive and learning disabilities.

The new success criteria in WCAG 2.1 include screen orientation, text spacing, non-text contrast, status messages, motion actuation (shaking and tilting requirements), as well as pointer gestures (swiping, dragging and pinch-to- zoom features). The current published draft of WCAG 2.1 can be found on the W3C website here.

W3C is currently accepting public comments regarding WCAG 2.1 through May 22, 2018. The final draft of WCAG 2.1 is scheduled to be release in June of 2018.

Unsure if your website is compliant with current digital accessibility standards? Contact us at 850-807-4424.