10.1 Ensuring dynamic content is accessible
The New Zealand Web Standards 2.0 were released in March 2009 and replace the previous version, the New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0 (below). See Meeting the standards for more information.
The Standard
10.1 Ensure that dynamic content is accessible. Provide an alternative presentation or page, and ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes.
Guide to this Standard
Explanation is easiest by example (as follows):
Consider a site that enables a user to shop for various products offered for sale.
The products available for selection may be presented graphically, in which case a text equivalent is also expected.
As a user selects products for purchase, the content of the shopping basket will increase. This is an example of dynamic content. The shopping basket content may be presented to the user with a graphic of each product selected (no doubt also with quantity). It would be expected to have a text equivalent with each product selected.
As an alternative, offer a non-graphic presentation version to the user.
This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoints 6.2 and 6.5 for NZ government agencies.
Rationale for this standard
Dynamic presentation causes problems for screen readers and other screen scanning devices, which may easily become confused with content changing dynamically.
It also presents difficulties for users with impaired vision.
It is difficult to provide meaningful alt-text for random images dynamically served to a page.
