Joe Clark, author of Building Accessible Websites (which needs a cover less-reminiscent of a certain web meme, in my opinion), wrote an impassioned tirade against the perceived uselessness of the W3C’s WCAG 2 guidelines back in May. Joe makes a lot of sense, and if you are at all involved in developing websites, I think it behooves you to read this article.

A few relevant quotes: “[T]o an uninformed reader, WCAG 2 seems reasonable. It isn’t, and you as a working standards-compliant developer are going to find it next to impossible to implement WCAG 2.”

“The WCAG development process is inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t speak English. More importantly, it’s inaccessible to some people with disabilities.”

“[S]lideshows are now officially deemed to be “video,” which will come as a surprise to Flickr users.”