Standards and legal requirements

This section introduces important standards and legal requirements for accessible web content.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) form the basis of most national regulations and also of European directives.

The European Norm EN 301549 directly reproduces WCAG in its section on web accessibility.

The new Directive for the accessibility if public sector websites and apps in Europe legally requires public sector bodies to make their web sites, mobile applications and intranets accessible, with different time scales for implementation. The Directive references the European Norm EN 301 549, which means that it indirectly points to WCAG.

If a web site or application can be used by all does not only depend on conformance to technical standards like WCAG. There are other important requirements that can be found in Usability standards like EN ISO 9241-110 (Ergonomics of human-system interaction -- Part 110: Dialogue principles).

In addition, there are various recommendations for making content easier to understand, for example, by using clear and simple language or additional graphics. Many of these recommendations do not have the status of an international standard, but they are nevertheless important resources for creating content that can be accessed and used by all.