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Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Last Call Working Draft Released

December 13th, 2007

A second Last Call Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) and updated working drafts of Understanding WCAG 2.0 and Techniques for WCAG 2.0 were released by the W3C for broad community review and comment. WCAG 2.0 addresses accessibility of web content for people with disabilities. It will apply to a wider range of web technologies than WCAG 1.0, and is intended to be understandable to a wider audience.

A good place to start a review of the WCAG 2.0 draft is with the Overview of WCAG 2.0 Documents. The Overview explains the relationships between WCAG 2.0 and the documents developed to support it:

These supporting documents will be released as Working Group Notes when WCAG 2.0 becomes a Recommendation.

Publication as a Last Call Working Draft indicates that the WCAG Working Group believes it has addressed all substantive issues and that the document is stable. The Working Group believes that after Last Call, WCAG 2.0 will be ready to move on to the next stages of the W3C Recommendation Track Process. Until WCAG 2.0 becomes a W3C Recommendation, WCAG 1.0 will continue to be the current and stable document to use.

The Trace Center has been a leader and key contributor in the development of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Trace Center Director Gregg Vanderheiden has been the co-chair of the WCAG Working Group since its inception. Vanderheiden, co-chair Loretta Guarino Reid, Google, Inc., Trace Web Accessibility Specialist Ben Caldwell and Michael Cooper, W3C, are co-editors of the guidelines.

For more information, visit the home page of the Web Accessibility Initiative.