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Morten Rand-Hendriksen There is a very good reason why the movement needs to be aggressive: We (the entire web design and development community) have been resting on our laurels and ignoring a large portion of the population in the process and now governments across the globe are taking the necessary steps to force us to shape up. In Norway and several other countries laws are kicking in as of June 30th that mandate all websites except personal blogs and certain media-specific solutions to meet WCAG 2.1 standards. If new websites do not meet these standards the owners (usually businesses) will be on the hook for it. These owners will immediately turn around and blame WordPress. This will be especially nasty for WordPress.com which markets itself to small business owners. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. In Canada several provinces now mandate anyone working for or with a government agency to meet WCAG 2.1 in all their projects. Same goes for several US states. If we as a community don’t get on this right now we will be left behind for other solutions like Drupal who are already ahead. I understand the argument that we need practical standards and application and education, but if we are going to wait for developers to educate themselves on this we will have to wait a very long time. And that’s time we simply don’t have. Accessibility is not a feature. It is a requirement if you want to make the web accessible to all. And as far as I’m concerned that is the mandate of WordPress as well.
Morten Rand-Hendriksen
There is a very good reason why the movement needs to be aggressive: We (the entire web design and development community) have been resting on our laurels and ignoring a large portion of the population in the process and now governments across the globe are taking the necessary steps to force us to shape up. In Norway and several other countries laws are kicking in as of June 30th that mandate all websites except personal blogs and certain media-specific solutions to meet WCAG 2.1 standards. If new websites do not meet these standards the owners (usually businesses) will be on the hook for it. These owners will immediately turn around and blame WordPress. This will be especially nasty for WordPress.com which markets itself to small business owners.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. In Canada several provinces now mandate anyone working for or with a government agency to meet WCAG 2.1 in all their projects. Same goes for several US states. If we as a community don’t get on this right now we will be left behind for other solutions like Drupal who are already ahead.
I understand the argument that we need practical standards and application and education, but if we are going to wait for developers to educate themselves on this we will have to wait a very long time. And that’s time we simply don’t have. Accessibility is not a feature. It is a requirement if you want to make the web accessible to all. And as far as I’m concerned that is the mandate of WordPress as well.
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