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APCA Accessibility Statement

Version v0.3.0 August 25, 2023 Contents

At their option, beta testers, early adopters, and sites using APCA to provide design guidance, may wish to include one of the following statements in their site’s boilerplate, Terms of Service document, or as part of a larger accessibility statement.

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APCA Accessibility Statement v0.3.0 (A) •• short form

This simple, short statement should be fine for most sites in most regions. WCAG 2 is not mentioned Naturally it is up to the designer/developer/site owner to determine the means & methods of any contractual or legal obligations they are required to maintain.

STATEMENT A START   ↓   (Short)

This website is using the APCA™ readability guidelines for determining visual contrast of text and non-text elements.

This site’s visually-readable primary content is designed to meet or exceed the Bronze Simple conformance level, as defined in version: (Public Beta Working Draft 2023), of the APCA Readability Criteria (ARC), which provides improved visual readability, enhancing actual accessibility and visual readability for users of this website. If you have questions, concerns, or problems, please contact the accessibility manager or webmaster of this site. The APCA Readability Criteria is designed to substantially exceed earlier guidelines in terms of actual accessibility. If you find you are experiencing a functional problem with text contrast on this site, please let us know by forwarding to the URL to bugreport at readtech.org

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APCA Accessibility Statement v0.3.0 (B) •• short form

This simple, short statement should be fine for most sites in most regions. WCAG 2 is specifically mentioned Naturally it is up to the designer/developer/site owner to determine the means & methods of any contractual or legal obligations they are required to maintain.

STATEMENT B START   ↓   (Short)

This website is using the APCA™ readability guidelines for determining visual contrast of text and non-text elements.

This site’s visually-readable primary content is designed to meet or exceed the Bronze Simple conformance level, as defined in version: (Public Beta Working Draft 2023), of the APCA Readability Criteria (ARC), which provides improved visual readability, enhancing actual accessibility and visual readability for users of this website. If you have questions, concerns, or problems, please contact the accessibility manager or webmaster of this site. The APCA Readability Criteria is designed to substantially exceed SC 1.4.3 and SC 1.4.11 of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines in terms of actual accessibility. If you find you are experiencing a functional problem with text contrast on this site, please let us know by forwarding to the URL to bugreport at readtech.org

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APCA Accessibility Statement v0.3.0 (C) •• alternate method, replacing WCAG 2

This, more complete statement, is aimed at sites that wish to more thoroughly promote readability and enhance actual accessibility, and for sites that » may have some concerns or ambiguities regarding the replacement of WCAG 2 contrast criteria.

STATEMENT C START   ↓   (Supplant WCAG 2)

This website is using the APCA™ readability guidelines for determining visual contrast of text and non-text elements.

Recent research, and advances in colorimetry, readability, and vision science, have shown that some established math and methods for determining visual contrast, including those defined in WCAG 2 SC 1.4.3 and 1.4.11, do not accurately model the human vision system’s perception of text and graphics on self-illuminated displays, nor do the older guidelines indicate the actual readability.

The APCA maths, methods, and guidelines were developed to correct the deficiencies of the existing WCAG 2 contrast criteria. The APCA Readability Criteria is designed to substantially exceed SC 1.4.3 and SC 1.4.11 of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines in terms of actual accessibility, as well as providing more flexible design choices. For instance APCA can correctly calculate colors for dark mode which WCAG 2 cannot.

Additionally, US Access Board 508 rules permit alternative methods other than WCAG 2, as do many other rules or regulations, with the aim to provide for enhanced actual accessibility. (REFERENCE: Appendix A to Part 1194 – Section 508 Chapter 1 § E101.2 Equivalent Facilitation: “The use of an alternative design or technology that results in substantially equivalent or greater accessibility and usability…is permitted.”)

Therefore, incorporating APCA guidelines herein is a best practice for actual accessibility and accommodating user needs for visual readability, in furtherance of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). An implication however is that any automated conformance testing or measuring of contrast, conducted on this site must be conducted using a modern, perceptually uniform, text-aware contrast method, such as APCA: Accessible Perceptual Contrast Algorithm™. The WCAG 2.x (1.4.3) math, methods, and success criterion are not relevant for this site, and are obsolete as far as this site is concerned.

REGARDING WCAG 3.0: “APCA™ is still the candidate contrast method for WCAG 3, which has been pushed several years into the future. But the needs of the accessibility and design communities are pressing today, so the APCA™ is also being developed with an independent set of guidelines. Accessibility advocates, designers, and developers can access this technology now, as a public beta.

Conformance level

This site’s visually-readable primary content is designed to meet or exceed the **Bronze Simple** conformance level, as defined in version: (Public Beta Working Draft 2023), of the APCA Readability Criteria (ARC), which provides improved visual readability, enhancing actual accessibility and visual readability for users of this website.

COMMENTS WELCOME: APCA is presently in public beta—won’t you join us in building a more readable future? If you have questions, concerns, or problems, please contact the accessibility manager or webmaster of this site. The APCA Readability Criteria is designed to substantially exceed SC 1.4.3 and SC 1.4.11 of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines in terms of actual accessibility. If you find you are experiencing a functional problem with visual contrast on this site, please let us know by forwarding to the URL to bugreport at readtech.org

And to learn more about contrast and color theory, here’s a catalog of resources, including bibliographies of the peer-reviewed research and scientific-consensus colorimetry that laid the foundation for these breakthroughs: git.myndex.com

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APCA Accessibility Statement v0.3.0 (D) •• SHORT For tools or libraries

If you have a live tool or color system that uses APCA, or if you are putting together a library or framework that will have APCA code in it for others to integrate, then below is the accessibility statement that you would want to associate with those projects. See also INTEGRATION COMPLIANCE.

STATEMENT D START   ↓   (Short - tools or libraries)

The components, CSS properties, and design elements in this library were developed using the APCA™ readability guidelines for determining visual contrast of text and non-text elements.

This library’s visually readable color framework is designed to meet or exceed the Bronze Simple conformance level, as defined in version: (Public Beta Working Draft 2023), of the APCA Readability Criteria (ARC), which provides improved visual readability, enhancing actual accessibility and visual readability.

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APCA Accessibility Statement v0.3.0 (E) •• LONG For tools or libraries

If you have a live tool or color system that uses APCA, or if you are putting together a library or framework that will have APCA code in it for others to integrate, then below is the accessibility statement that you would want to associate with those projects. See also INTEGRATION COMPLIANCE.

STATEMENT E START   ↓   (tools or libraries)

This <contrast tool / color system / library / framework> is using the APCA™ algorithm and readability guidelines for determining visual contrast of text and non-text elements.

Recent research, and advances in colorimetry, readability, and vision science, have shown that some established math and methods for determining visual contrast, including those defined in WCAG 2 SC 1.4.3 and 1.4.11, do not accurately model the human vision system’s perception of text and graphics on self-illuminated displays, nor do the older guidelines indicate the actual readability.

The APCA maths, methods, and guidelines were developed to correct the deficiencies of the existing WCAG 2 contrast criteria. The APCA Readability Criteria is designed to substantially exceed SC 1.4.3 and SC 1.4.11 of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines in terms of actual accessibility, as well as providing more flexible design choices. For instance APCA can correctly calculate colors for dark mode which WCAG 2 cannot.

Additionally, US Access Board 508 rules permit alternative methods other than WCAG 2, as do many other rules or regulations, with the aim to provide for enhanced actual accessibility. (REFERENCE: Appendix A to Part 1194 – Section 508 Chapter 1 § E101.2 Equivalent Facilitation: “The use of an alternative design or technology that results in substantially equivalent or greater accessibility and usability…is permitted.”)

Therefore, incorporating APCA guidelines herein is a best practice for actual accessibility and accommodating user needs for visual readability, in furtherance of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). An implication however is that any automated conformance testing or measuring of contrast, conducted on this site must be conducted using a modern, perceptually uniform, text-aware contrast method, such as APCA: Accessible Perceptual Contrast Algorithm™. The WCAG 2.x (1.4.3) math, methods, and success criterion are not relevant for this site, and are obsolete as far as this site is concerned.

Of course, the compliance requirements for sites in different regions or jurisdictions should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, to certify the needs of their particular market sector. Nothing in this statement should be construed as legal advice.

REGARDING WCAG 3.0: “APCA™ is still the candidate contrast method for WCAG 3, which has been pushed several years into the future. But the needs of the accessibility and design communities are pressing today, so the APCA™ is also being developed with an independent set of guidelines. Accessibility advocates, designers, and developers can access this technology now as the public beta, with some minor caveats:

  1. Use only the guidelines at the canonical Myndex repos.
  2. Bridge PCA if you absolutely positively have to be backwards compatible to WCAG 2 by the numbers, then you can use Bridge PCA, and the Bridge PCA guidelines to give you better readability but also to match when WCAG 2 incorrectly rejects.
    • Situations where you would be required to ensure to the absolute letter of WCAG 2 contrast SCs appear to be fairly rare, as WCAG 2 is a voluntary guideline in most areas of the world.
    • Nevertheless it is important to recognize if you’re in a region that does have such a requirement, Bridge PCA is backwards compatible to WCAG 2.

COMMENTS WELCOME: APCA is presently in public beta, won’t you join us in building a more readable future? Please let us know about any problems, questions, or concerns related to readability and perceptual contrast at the APCA readability discussion forum.

To learn more about contrast and color theory, here’s a catalog of resources, including bibliographies of the peer-reviewed research and scientific-consensus colorimetry that laid the foundation for these groundbreaking new methods: git.myndex.com

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APCA Notes

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