Sitemorse - helping you with WCAG2.0 across your digital presence

LONDON - April 14, 2014 - PRLog -- WCAG 2.0 is aimed at making online content easier to navigate and use for people with a very wide range of disabilities, but is very different from its predecessor, WCAG 1.0, which has been in use since 1999, and is likely to be considerably more complex for website owners and managers to implement.

Sitemorse, which has in excess of a decade of experience in automated testing of websites, has been monitoring and reviewing the uptake of new standard from the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3), since its introduction. As a result we are rolling out new functionality in our Web Management Toolkit (WMTK) and Governisation products, that help organisations maintain online governance, and allow users to see in detail how their content measures up to the new standard.

The new functionality, which will be available at no extra charge to all Sitemorse users, will not entirely replace manual testing of accessibility issues. However automated testing is able to scan entire websites on a large scale that could not be handled by even a dedicated team of testers, and in addition will assist in identifying ‘where to focus’.

The above example shows a website with a missing image ‘alt tag’, viewed in the Sitemorse Snapshot tool. As a result of the missing tag, the page fails a number of techniques in WCAG 2.0. It’s one example of how a small issue can mean pages can fail the new standard for a variety of reasons.

Lawrence Shaw, CEO of Sitemorse, commented: “Frequent automated reports ensure users are aware of any potential issues as they arise, and with the speed of change on so many sites, coupled with the reliance on third party integration, it has never been more necessary to thoroughly audit a site and web estate as a whole”.

“The WCAG 2.0 standards have huge advantages for those who genuinely want to achieve online accessibility and who can put the necessary resource in place. We intend to work with our clients, understand their requirements for accessibility testing in their own digital governance and implement custom reporting that will help them on their journey, rather than just impose the findings of WCAG 2.0 automated testing on them.” he added.

WCAG 2.0 succeeds WCAG 1.0, published in May 1999, but it does not invalidate the earlier standard. The W3C recommends new and updated content follows v2.0, while existing websites can continue to use v1.0. Sitemorse will continue for the moment to base the results of our accessibility testing on the earlier standard, although in the future will start incorporating the results of WCAG 2.0 findings in the Accessibility and Overall scores for regular audits and Sitemorse Quarterly INDEXES.

Sitemorse users will be able to see a new look dashboard which will show their results to both the 1.0 and 2.0 standards.

The new standard aims to be technology-neutral adjusting to the fast pace of online changes. It has four main principles, that websites should be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust, these being underpinned by a variety of techniques for compliance.

About WCAG 2.0

The WCAG 2 standard has been developed by WC3, an international community led by web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and is aimed at making online content easier to navigate and use for people with a very wide range of disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these.  Most people accept that high standards of accessibility benefit all web users, not just the disabled.

About Sitemorse

Sitemorse has more than a decade of experience in automated testing of websites and regularly benchmarks sites from a variety of industry sectors for its published Index reports.

Sitemorse also tests other web formats, including Flash, PDFs (portable document formats, widely used for presenting online data) and CSS (cascading style sheets, used as part of web design). In late 2013 we enhanced our PDF testing to not only find broken links and problem email addresses but to also report on the construction quality of the PDF itself.

More information

•          For further Information: Geoff Paddock, Head of Communications on +44 207 183 5588 gpaddock@Sitemorse.com