AEM and the Web Accessibility Guidelines

There are many social, economical and legal motivations for ensuring that web content is designed to be as accessible as possible to the target audience, regardless of any disability or limitations they may have. Web accessibility is therefore an increasingly important aspect of good web design.

Creating accessible websites and content with AEM impact:

• Administrators responsible for configuring Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) to ensure all accessibility features are correctly enabled.
  
• Authors using these features to create web sites that support key guidelines in WCAG 2.0.
  Creating accessible content is a process. AEM provides the capabilities, but content authors need to ensure that they follow the techniques required to create accessible content.
• Template developers should also be aware of such issues when implementing the website design.

The following pages and section provide information and guidelines:

• Configuring the Rich Text Editor for Producing Accessible Sites
  Guidelines on how administrators can configure AEM for producing accessible content.
  
• Creating Accessible Content (WCAG 2.0 Conformance)
  The WCAG 2.0 Guidelines provide a list of success criteria for Level A and Level AA conformance levels. This page details the success criteria covered by AEM, together with how to meet them when generating content.
  
• Quick Guide to WCAG 2.0
  Background information about WCAG 2.0.  

The best practices documented here and on our other pages was initially authored by The Paciello Group - a consulting group dedicated to helping government agencies, technology vendors, e-commerce corporations, and educational institutions make their technology equally accessible to all people, including those with disabilities. For more information about The Paciello Group visit their website.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community dedicated to developing web standards. To help web designers and developers produce accessible web sites their Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 in December 2008 (updating the original version published in 1999).

Using Adobe Experience Manager, content authors and/or website owners can create web content that meets WCAG 2.0 Level A and Level AA success criteria.

Specific aspects of WCAG 2.0 are highlighted in our quick guide to WCAG 2.0.

WCAG 2.0 provides guidelines (with related success criteria) covering their accessibility levels.

These, as they relate to AEM,  are covered under Level A and AA Conformance. When creating your site, you should determine the overall level to which you would like your site to conform.

For further information on Accessibility at Adobe, please visit the Adobe Accessibility Resource Center.

In particular the AEM 5.6 Section 508 Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) also throws light on how AEM can assist federal agencies comply with Section 508 requirements.