One label to rule them all ™
VAC stands for Valid, Accessible and Compatible, three crucial inter-disciplinary components of all websites. Let's discover what the phrase really means, and how you can make your website VAC:
Valid
In short, your site should be free of coding errors. It's a very simple claim and yet it seems so difficult to accomplish, or so it was until CSS arrived. With Cascading Stylesheets, all the horrible mess of tables disappears, and making your site valid in accordance to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C for short) has never been easy. Most sites now use significantly less code now that there isn't the need for messy HTML. Less code, less mess.
So how do I make my site valid? »
Accessible
Make your website accessible to all, including those with physical or technological disabilities, so that more people can enjoy the content you've put online. Remember, Ajax, Javascript, and Flash can make websites look very snazzy, but it's also important to keep in mind the concept of "degrading gracefully". Pull down fences and barriers and make more accessible pages your visitors can easily navigate through.
So how do I make my site accessible? »
Compatible
Your site should abide by standards that are set so that it's easier to speak each other's language. Websites are personal showcases of online expression. That way, every browser will understand the code, and will therefore display your website correctly, each and every time.
So how do I make my site compatible? »
But my site is valid! Why would I need VAC recognition?
Right now people have all sorts of labels on their site: Valid XHTML 1.0, Valid CSS, Bobby checked, 508 compliant... an anarchy of sorts. It would be much more convenient if there existed one simple label that would inform its visitors that the owner has taken the time to make the website valid, accessible and compliant, making it a truly enjoyable experience to all who visit.
Who benefits?
Everyone does. Search engines like Google do, because your website's content is easier to crawl and sift through. Jackie, who is a fictional character in Mark Pilgrim's "Dive into Accessibility", and blind, benefits, because she can get through your website with a software called JAWS and see pretty much everything. Michael, similarly, with protanopia, or colorblindness, benefits because your website relies on making links easier to see. Bill gets to navigate easily through your site even though his right arm is weak. Lilian, who can't see terribly well, can nevertheless see your website in larger font because you use relative font sizes, rather than fixed ones. With VAC, you get recognized, and everyone gets to see it.