On March 20, 2014, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) took an important step to make web content and applications more accessible to people with disabilities by publishing Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. WAI-ARIA defines ways that developers of browsers, media players, mobile devices and assistive technologies, as well as content developers, can achieve greater cross-platform accessibility. Learn more about WAI-ARIA.
"ARIA is general tool which can be used to add accessibility to many different technologies," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. "It is used by HTML 5 now and is being built into additional W3C specifications. In the dynamic and interactive world of the web today, it essential to describe to accessibility software what the different parts of a web page do, so that users with disabilities can use them effectively."
Paul Schroeder, AFB's vice president of programs and policy, commented, "The Web Accessibility Initiative has once again taken a critical step to help ensure that the power and benefit of the Internet becomes available to people with vision loss and other disabilities. The adoption of the ARIA recommendation will provide website developers with tools and guidance to ensure that Web-based software and functionality can be used with a variety of specialized assistive technology. As a provider of significant Web content ourselves, AFB relies on WCAG and the work of WAI."
The Protocols and Formats Working Group welcomes user input, stating: "This 1.0 release of WAI-ARIA is an important milestone, but the work is not done." Learn more about how you can get involved with the Working Group. What accessibility improvements would you like to see on websites?
