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In practice, many of the guidelines could be commonplace across the EU, but as Mel Pedley noted in her accessites article, different countries have different rates of dyslexia because of different language structures.

It may therefore be appropriate to pay closer attention to the problems of dyslexia in one language than another. It may be appropriate to have one set of rules for all “English language” sites, but other languages might be better off with rules custom tailored to themselves (or indeed problems specific to a particular country).

In this case, we have to remember why we’re pushing accessibility: to help users. If we can help users in a particular country more by having a specific standard tailored to their needs, then why not do it?

Although I do have to say, I’d not specifically have anything against a pan-European base for the standard, but the key points are that what is suitable for one group (e.g. higher contrast) may cause problems for another (e.g. those with Scoptic sensitivity) and so it makes sense to tailor the requirements to the individual populations and characteristics of the language, rather than assuming one size will always fit all.

You wouldn’t give every disabled person a wheelchair, so why assume that the nature of disability and disability related difficulties is identical across different languages? In which case it would make perfect sense for the guidelines of a country with a high proportion of Scoptic sensitivity sufferers to look for different colour contrast standards to a country with a very low proportion.

But the key, key point is that any standard of this nature to be adopted must be revised on at least a yearly basis otherwise it’s frankly not worth having.

I’m not claiming to “know best” after all, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you – or anyone else – had more serious objections than just “quibbles”. It’s really just a list a threw together so if it ever was to be used as the basis for something, I know it would need more work anyway.

The rest is kind of OK, though I have quibbles.

Because there is no official document for government websites, it ends up as my interpretation of what I think is ‘AA’. I’ve been lucky because we’ve had a designer/htmler who really knew their onions, so I’ve been able to work with them to get what we want, which is a new website that’s far more accessible than our old one. And meeting our ‘targets’.

But another web project has been hell because a different contractor has played ‘dumb’ on WCAG and I’ve had to spec absolutely everything in detail and really put my foor down, resulting in arguments and horror meetings because they aren’t bothered. And it’s therefore hard for me to put the argument across to ‘the people who make decisions’ my end because they also depend on my interpretation of WCAG and my success in articulating it. ‘AA’ has become a dodgy buzzword, with everyone nodding in agreement and repeating it, but not really understanding its meaning.

So without going into the ins and outs of what it should be saying, I agree that we need an official document. And preferably in plain English.