Accessible web design

Question

Not sure if this question is a good fit for this forum, if not maybe some moderators can move it to StackOverflow.

Where should I be looking to make an accessible web site nowadays? I remember 10 years ago there was the WAI Initiative. Is that still documenting best practices and issuing recommendation towards making an accessible website? I mean I know they do have an updated website but is someone still considering their recommendation meaningful or has some other standard emerged out of the real world practices?

Or is accessibility nowadays about writing valid and semantically meaningful markup/css and applying micro-formats the way Wordpress does it?

Answer 1

Semantically meaningful markup and accessibility are two different things. Perfectly semantically code may not be accessible and accessible pages may not be semantic al all. I suggest you read the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines, published in 2008 by the W3C and check your websites against it:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#guidelines

You can be really proud if they can comply with all the guidelines.

The W3C is still the main authority regarding standards on the world wide web, but other websites may have useful recommendations.

Answer 2

This is a bit old, but ADA Sec. 508 has actually been around for close to 40 years. Here's an official doc: http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm