Problem/Motivation

The W3C has released Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 - which introduces new Success Criteria. Our current accessibility gate aims to satisfy WCAG Success Criteria at levels A and AA. This looks like a very significant expansion of WCAG, so we can expect it to affect Drupal in a lot of challenging ways.

The WCAG 2.1 timeline sets December 2017 as the target for a Candidate Recommendation stage, graduating to a full Recommendation in mid-2018.

An update to the WCAG supporting documents ("Understanding WCAG") is also proposed (this is where the longer details, examples, testing notes, and techniques live).

Confirmed new WCAG Success Criteria

As of 24 April 2018 Proposed Recommendation, the following new Success Criteria are confirmed.

Level A:

Level AA:

Note that some new Success Criteria are also being introduced at level AAA, but since our target is level AA it is not essential that we address these.

Level AAA:

Proposed resolution

Drupal 8 is already leading the way as an accessible CMS. Let's hold on to this achievement :-)

Discuss the impact, and come up with approaches!

File child issues for anything we know we must address. (For tracking our progress, please use this issue as the parent and/or the "wcag21" tag.)

Get off the island, and contribute to the W3C process? The new success criteria are being refined in GitHub issues at w3c/wcag21.

Remaining tasks

Monitor the progress of the new success criteria, and refine our approaches as they mature.

It's probably OK to wait until individual criteria have been finalized, before coming up with our approaches.

Some proposed Success Criteria are proving controversial, so it makes sense to wait for the Candidate Recommendation stage, and implementation consensus in the wider accessibility community. Update: as of the April 2018 Proposed Recommendation working draft, the list of new Success Criteria is finalized (according to the WCAG 2.1 Timeline).

User interface changes

YES. UI and theme changes are expected, e.g.

SC 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast - some of our focus styles don't pass this. Pale blue halo around a blue button Mild background colour change when drop-button arrow is focused.

Some proposed success criteria address cognitive accessibility at A and AA levels. There may be a need to improve some of our UI text to satisfy SC 2.5.3 Label In Name.

@todo: Flesh this out when we know more, especially when it reaches the candidate recommendation stage

API changes

None expected, as yet.

Data model changes

None expected, as yet.

Further Reading