The internet and the web are world-wide resources. They are not constrained by borders and countries. Because these are world-wide resources, it was important to create shared standards across the world. In 1994 Tim Berners-Lee, founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards which can be used by individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.
In April 1997 the W3C created the The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) whose mission is to create strategies, standards, and supporting resources to make the Web accessible to people with disabilities.
One of the most important documents to come from W3C are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines were created to help define how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Since it’s release, WCAG 2.0 has become the internationally recognized benchmark for web accessibility.
One of many excellent online resources created by the W3C is the WebAIM website (Web Accessibility in Mind) at “http://webaim.org” . Based at Utah State University, it provides information, training, and practical tools for creating accessible content.
There are four main guiding principles of accessibility upon which WCAG has been built. These four principles are known by the acronym POUR.
POUR is a way of approaching web accessibility by breaking it down into four main aspects:
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
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