Accessibility Standards & Legislation
Rules, regulations and requirements for compliance.
Document Accessibility Standards
WCAG 2.0
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (ISO/IEC 40500:2012) were developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a working group of the W3C, and are accepted worldwide. They cover a broad range of requirements from visual, audio output, cognitive challenges.
Accessibility legislations worldwide look to the WCAG 2.0 as a guideline for their legislation’s standards.
PDF/UA
The PDFUA standard (ISO14289-1:2014) defines the requirements that an accessible PDF document has to conform with and provides a consistent means for achieving accessible PDF documents.
The PDF/UA standard is complementary to the WCAG 2.0 success criteria, and it is therefore compliant with its requirements. We highly recommend this format for all of your public facing documents.
Accessibility Legislation
ADA
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) legislation, all US State governments, local governments as well as private and non-profit organizations that have “places of public accommodation” (including internet sites) are required to provide access to information and data to people with disabilities. See our article on ADA Compliance for more details.
AODA
The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) adopts the WCAG 2.0 guidelines for all public facing or publicly issued electronic documents and applies to all organizations in Ontario. See our articles on the AODA Information and Communication Standards and File Formats for AODA Compliance for more details.
Section 508
Section 508 compliance is overseen by the US Access Board. Under the Section 508 legislation, all US Federal organizations (or any organization who does business with it) are required to provide access to information and data to people with disabilities. See our article on Section 508 Compliance for more details.
Global Accessibility
Governments around the world have embraced accessibility and many have introduced regulations to ensure organizations comply. The United Nations has declared accessibility an inalienable right.
Are your documents accessible?
Make sure that your organization is meeting its legal accessibility requirements. Compliance with existing legislation laws can be tricky and producing accessible PDFs is complex. Don’t worry, we are here to help!
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