1. Perceivable
1.3 Adaptable (Level A)
Contents
Guideline 1.3 Adaptable
Create content that can be presented in different ways without losing information or structure (e.g., a simpler layout).
Key Point: WCAG 2.0 included only Level A success criteria for Guideline 1.3. WCAG 2.1 added two additional Level AA requirements, plus one new Level AAA requirement that will be introduced on the page that follows.
Guideline 1.3 Adaptable Explained
Why should I make it possible to present content in different ways?
People need choices in how they use computers. One of the advantages of electronic documents over paper is flexibility. It is — or should be — easy to substitute one font for another or change colours, line spacing, margins, and dozens of other formatting characteristics. By following a handful of guidelines, web content authors make it easy for users to adjust the appearance and organization of web pages to suit users’ individual needs. For example:
- An individual with low vision can read many web pages when the font is yellow, zoomed at 400% larger than normal, and displayed on a black background. If web content authors follow guidelines, users can substitute a custom style sheet to display pages in their desired format.
- A screen reader user accesses an online article about Canadian weather. The content includes a data table that shows the number of hours of sunshine per year for every provincial capital. The user can navigate from cell to cell in the table, certain about which cells contain header information and which cells contain data. A user using a screen reader should be able to determine, for example, that Winnipeg receives an average of 2,372 hours of sunshine per year.
- A lawyer accesses the Internet from a web-enabled cell phone. Despite the small screen, she can easily read the content on a law library site that conforms to WCAG 2.1 guidelines.
Success Criterion 1.3.1 Info and Relationships
Level A
Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text.
Definition
Programmatically Determined: Determined by software from author-supplied data provided in a way that different user agents, including assistive technologies, can extract and present this information to users in different modalities.
Definition
User Agent: Typically a web browser, though could be any software used to present web content to users, including assistive technologies.
Definition
Assistive Technology: Sometimes referred to as adaptive technology; software or hardware that acts as a user agent (or acts with a mainstream user agent) to provide functionality to meet the requirements of users with disabilities that go beyond those offered by mainstream user agents.
Info and Relationships Explained
If you look “under the hood” of a web page, you will find a document that consists of all the words that appear on the page (the “content”) thickly interspersed with words, non-words, numbers,