Deep Dive Into Regulations for Digital Accessibility

Selected:

ATAG

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 provide detailed accessibility standards for creating web content authoring tools. These guidelines present ways to make tools that are both more accessible to authors with disabilities and that are designed to encourage and promote the creation of more accessible web content by authors using those tools.

Authoring tools can enable, encourage, and assist users in the creation of accessible web content through proper standards, designs, prompts, alerts, QA and repair functions, help files, and other automated and self-assist capabilities. It is just as important that all people be able to author content (ATAG) as it is for all people to have access to content (WCAG).

The tools used to create this information must, therefore, be accessible. The adoption of these guidelines will contribute to the proliferation of web content that can be read by a broader range of readers and authoring tools that can be used by a broader range of authors. ATAG guidelines are relevant for the following editing tools:

  • Tools designed to produce web content (e.g., WYSIWYG HTML and XML editors);
  • Tools that save content in web formats (e.g., word processors or desktop publishing apps);
  • Tools that convert documents into web formats (e.g., DOCX to HTML converters);
  • Tools that produce multimedia that is used on the web (e.g., video editors);
  • Tools for website management, including CMS platforms and website publishing tools (e.g., WordPress, Wix, SquareSpace);
  • Tools for layout design and formatting (e.g., CSS authoring tools).