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The 411 on 4.1.1

Adrian Roselli writes about WCAG SC 4.1.1: a 13.5 years old rule that first came out in WCAG 2.0. Roughly, it stipulates that content should have proper markup (elements only nested as per specifications, no duplicate attributes or IDs, etc).

One of the authors recently-ish filed a proposal to clarify the language, claiming that the original intent of the criterion was narrower than the current interpretation reflects. Moreover, it’s been argued that 4.1.1 as a whole should be deprecated now that browsers more predictably handle nesting, closing elements and duplicate attributes. It may disappear as early as WCAG 2.2.

Adrian goes into technical detail on why each thing covered by 4.1.1 is either no longer relevant, or considers where that thing might be better covered by other Success Criteria. He anticipates that the W3C will “come out with a clearer and better considered mapping for former 4.1.1 issues”.

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