The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released an updated draft methodology for evaluating the accessibility of digital products, which is up for review.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) 2 provides a step-by-step process for assessing how well digital products conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
WCAG-EM 2 guides evaluators through defining the evaluation scope, exploring the target product, selecting a representative sample set, evaluating the sample, and reporting findings. It’s suitable for different evaluation contexts, including self-assessment and third-party evaluation.
A key update: unlike WCAG-EM 1, which focused on websites and web pages, WCAG-EM 2 also applies to apps and other digital products.
WCAG-EM 2 is critical to the work of ensuring digital accessibility.
The W3C is seeking feedback on WCAG-EM 2, particularly on:
Whether it covers all types of digital products
The use of ‘sample set’ and ‘sample’ terminology
Its usefulness for evaluating apps.
Comments can be submitted via GitHub (create a separate issue per topic) or email to public-agwg-comments@w3.org.