Is HTML5 valid with WCAG 2.0 Level AA?

Question

I'm not familiarized with the english accessibility specifications.

I know with RGAA in France we can't use HTML5 because we must be compatible with IE6 (no-js), and the most part of screen readers are based on it.

RGAA and accessiweb Silver are both inspired by WCAG 2.0 Level AA, so I suppose I can't use HTML5 but I just want to be sure.

Thanks.

Answer 1

WCAG is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and isn't tied to any particular technology. Rather it is a

wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible.

Furthermore:

Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

Just like any other technology for presenting content, HTML5 can either conform to or break WCAG Guidelines.

For example, this example HTML5 document fragment can be considered "WCAG Compliant":

<h1>My page</h1>
<h2>Contents</h2>
<ul>
    <li>Chapter 1 - The beginning
    <li>Chapter 2 - The continuation
</ul>

The content is semantically laid out, and is not out of order.

Contrast that with this document fragment:

<span class="title">My page</span>
<span class="chapterHead">Contents</span>
<table>
    <tr><td>Chapter 1</td><td>The beginning</td>
    <tr><td>Chapter 2</td><td>The continuation</td>
</table>

Although valid HTML, this is less likely to pass WCAG Compliance as the headings are no longer marked up as such, and the table contents is now buried in a table.

WCAG is a set of Content Guidelines

The important thing to remember is that WCAG lays out a series of rules for how you create your content, and while it gives examples of how to meet this guidelines in some technologies, such as HTML5 or PDF, it can be applied to any electronic document format.

Note regarding IE6

Given that Microsoft themselves have marked Internet Explorer 6 for death, the percentage of people in France who use IE6 is about 0.5%, so trying to design content for it is cost and time prohibitive. Certainly, design for a fail-safe Javascript-less and CSS-less environment for screen readers and the like, but this can easily be tested in any major browser now-days.