Part B: Support the production of accessible content
Part B Conformance Applicability Notes:
Author availability: Any Part B success criteria that refer to authors only apply during authoring sessions.
Developer control: The Part B success criteria only apply to the authoring tool as it is provided by the developer. This does not include subsequent modifications by parties other than the authoring tool developer (e.g. third-party plug-ins, user-defined templates, user modifications of default settings).
Applicability after the end of an authoring session: Authoring tools are responsible for the web content accessibility (WCAG) of web content that they automatically generate after the end of an author's authoring session (see Success Criterion B.1.1.1). For example, if the developer changes the site-wide templates of a content management system, these would be required to meet the accessibility requirements for automatically-generated content. Authoring tools are not responsible for changes to the accessibility of content that the author causes, whether it is author-generated or automatically-generated by another system that the author has specified (e.g. a third-party feed).
Authoring systems: As per the ATAG 2.0 definition of authoring tool, several software tools (identified in any conformance claim) can be used in conjunction to meet the requirements of Part B (e.g. an authoring tool could make use of a third-party software accessibility checking tool).
Accessibility of features provided to meet Part B: The Part A success criteria apply to the entire authoring tool user interface, including any features that must be present to meet the success criteria in Part B (e.g. checking tools, repair tools, tutorials, documentation).
Multiple authoring roles: Some authoring tools include multiple author roles, each with different views and content editing permissions (e.g. a content management system may separate the roles of designers, content authors, and quality assurers). In these cases, the Part B success criteria apply to the authoring tool as a whole, not to the view provided to any particular authoring role. Accessible content support features should be made available to any authoring role where it would be useful.
Unrecognizable content: When success criteria require authoring tools to treat web content according to semantic criteria, the success criteria only apply when these semantics are encoded programmatically (e.g. text describing an image can only be considered a text alternatives for non-text content when this role is encoded within markup).