Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0 AA)

July 2014 – The U.S. Justice Department has announced a settlement with Florida’s Orange County Clerk of Courts to resolve violations regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  The Orange County Clerk of Courts allegedly failed to provide accessible court documents to a blind attorney, despite repeated requests. The attorney’s appeal for electronic documents, accessible by screen reader technology, was not provided in an accessible format for over four months.

July 2014 – The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative published a new document to help developers assess the accessibility of websites in addition to web and mobile applications. Titled Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM), the document provides a methodology developers can use to test websites and apps for conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.  In general, WCAG 2.0 focuses on individual web pages.

March 2014 — H&R Block has entered into a five-year consent decree with the Department of Justice (DOJ).  The decree follows complaints by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and two individual plaintiffs that H&R Block violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to ensure accessibility on their website and mobile applications.

February 2014 — The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Protocols and Formats Working Group published proposed recommendations regarding Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA).  The document outlines “ways to make web content, particularly web applications, more accessible to people with disabilities.” Complementing the current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, the proposed recommendations provide developers with guidelines to ensure that dynamic content or interfaces developed with Ajax, HTML or JavaScript, are accessible for people with disabilities and operabl

July 2013 — Louisiana Tech University and the Department of Justice have reached a settlement regarding allegations that, in violation of the ADA, the University used an “online learning product” that was inaccessible to a blind student in addition to not providing the student with accessible course materials in a subsequent course.  The settlement will require the University to reimburse the student for $23,543 in damages, while ensuring that all instructors and administrators are trained on the requirements of the ADA.  In addition, the University will be required to develop new policies