WCAG 2.1 Status
Latest Working Draft of WCAG 2.1
As of 28 July 2017, the Working Group has added eleven new success criteria to the guidelines, one clarification to conformance criteria, and some new terms. The 25 "proposed" success criteria that were in the first public working draft have been removed (unless subsequently formally accepted by the Working Group), and comments received on them continue to be processed. There have been four Working Drafts, on which were received approximately 200 comments.
The Working Group plans to switch focus to specification normalization at the end of 2017, which means it will focus on consistency and overlaps between the success criteria that have been accepted at that point. Testing and W3C acceptance review is scheduled next with a goal of making a WCAG 2.1 a W3C Recommendation by mid 2018.
This is fast work for accessibility guidelines of this nature and stature, but is needed for the guidelines to be issued while they are still relevant. It is likely that not all issues in web accessibility today will be addressed by WCAG 2.1, which is after all only a dot-release. The Working Group is also working on a major update to accessibility guidelines that will be more comprehensive, and if needed could begin work on a second dot-release of WCAG 2.
Proposals and Issues
The Working Group has received several dozen proposed success criteria and is now reviewing and modifying these proposals for potential inclusion in the guidelines. Discussion of these takes place in the respective GitHub issues, and on the Working Group mailing list.
Topics Especially In Need of Review
- Merging SC with 2.0
- Numbering and sorting
- Ednotes
Comment Processing
In addition to continuing to refine the success criterion proposals, the Working Group is processing public comments and formal comments from Working Group participants.
Drafts
The WCAG 2.1 Editors' Draft shows the latest content that has been accepted by the Working Group.
The Working Group intends to publish monthly Working Drafts to obtain ongoing review.
Because of the frequency of publication, not all comments on an earlier draft are necessarily addressed by the time of the next draft. These comments remain in queue to be processed when the Working Group focuses on the relevant part of the draft. The Working Group intends to respond to all comments by the time the specification reaches finalization stages.
Timeline
The WCAG 2.1 timeline indicates the stages of work planned by the Working Group.