Page 21 - GIGW2

Guidelines

for Indian Government Apps & Websites

persons with disabilities. Further Web accessibility also benefits people without disabilities as
a key principle of Web accessibility is designing Websites that are flexible to meet different
user needs, preferences, and situations. This flexibility benefits people without disabilities in
various situations such as slow Internet connection, presence of “temporary disabilities” such
as a broken arm and people with changing abilities due to aging.

The WCAG are organized around the four principles, which lay the foundation necessary for
anyone to access and use Web content. These require the web content to be;

1. Perceivable: users must be able to perceive the information being presented i.e. it
can’t be invisible to all of their senses.
2. Operable: users must be able to operate the interface and the interface cannot
require interaction that a user cannot perform.
3. Understandable: users must be able to understand the information as well as the
operation of the user interface.
4. Robust: users must be able to access the content as technologies advance.

Under each principle there is a list of guidelines. There are 12 guideline that address these
principles. The guidelines provide the basic goals that authors should work toward in order
to make content accessible to persons with disabilities. These guidelines are not objectively
testable however, under each guideline, there are Success Criteria that describe specifically
what must be achieved in order to conform to this standard. Each Success Criterion is written
as a statement that will be either true or false when specific Web content is tested against it.
The Success Criteria are written to be technology neutral.

GIGAW and Accessibility

One of the major focus areas of the Guidelines is web accessibility. With respect to accessibility
focus is on the following:
1. Addressing the needs of the persons with disabilities.
2. Ensuring that the sites are accessible with equal ease to all users on all the major
browsers and across all platforms and bandwidths i.e. universally accessible.

GIGAW aims to ensure that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate,
interact and contribute through Web. GIGAW has been developed in accordance with W3C’s
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 which are internationally accepted standards on
accessibility. GIGAW ensures compliance with level AA of WCAG 2.0. The guidelines
relating to web accessibility can be found under the following sections:
• Chapter 2 (Indian Government Identity) - guidelines 2.1.6.
• Chapter 5 (Quality of content) - guidelines 5.3.7, 5.4.2, 5.6.1, 5.6.3, 5.6.4.
• Chapter 6 (Design) - guidelines 6.2.1, 6.4.5, 6.5.1, 6.5.4, 6.6.1, 6.6.3, 6.7.2, 6.7.3, 6.8.2,
6.8.8, 6.9.1, 6.10.1.
• Chapter 7 (Development) - guidelines 7.5(a) to 7.5(j), 7.5(m) to 7.5(q).
• Chapter 11 (Mobile App Guidelines) - most of the guidelines under section 11.4.

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