Literature Reviews

Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.

• SAMBA: a semi-automatic method for measuring barriers of accessibility

  Giorgio Brajnik, Raffaella Lomuscio (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  Brajnik and Lomuscio argue that web accessibility cannot be managed without being measured, yet existing accessibility metrics are underdeveloped and almost universally tied to conformance with WCAG checkpoints rather than to the real-world barriers …

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility metrics
  • accessibility evaluation
  • accessibility testing
  • conformance testing
  • barrier walkthrough
  • expert review
  • automated testing
  • quality assurance

• Effects of sampling methods on web accessibility evaluations

  Giorgio Brajnik, Andrea Mulas, Claudia Pitton (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  Brajnik, Mulas, and Pitton's Assets '07 paper is a large, careful empirical investigation of the sampling step in web-accessibility evaluation — the step at which an evaluator picks which pages of a site to actually test. For any site above a trivial…

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility evaluation
  • sampling methods
  • accessibility metrics
  • conformance testing
  • automated testing
  • WCAG
  • quality assurance
  • research methodology
  • accessibility audit

• Towards Automated Accessibility Report Generation for Mobile Apps

  Amanda Swearngin, Jason Wu, Xiaoyi Zhang, Esteban Gomez, Jen Coughenour, Rachel Stukenborg, Bhavya Garg, Greg Hughes, Adriana Hilliard, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Jeffrey Nichols (2024) — ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

  This paper presents a system for automatically generating whole-app accessibility reports for mobile apps, addressing key limitations of existing accessibility scanning tools. The work begins with formative interviews with eight accessibility QA prof…

  • automated testing
  • accessibility testing
  • mobile accessibility
  • app crawling
  • machine learning
  • computer vision
  • quality assurance
  • accessibility metadata
  • screen readers

• Semantic Web enabled web accessibility evaluation tools

  Shadi Abou-Zahra (2005) — Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper by Shadi Abou-Zahra of the W3C presents the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) as a Semantic Web-based solution to fundamental problems in web accessibility evaluation tooling. Abou-Zahra identifies that the accessibility evaluation too…

  • automated testing
  • accessibility testing
  • semantic web
  • EARL
  • evaluation tools
  • quality assurance
  • interoperability
  • W3C

• MIPAW: Modele of a Progressive Implementation of Web Accessibility

  Jean-Pierre Villain, Olivier Nourry (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents MIPAW (Modele of a Progressive Implementation of Web Accessibility), a framework for reorganizing WCAG criteria into a user-centric, phased implementation model. The authors, who lead the AccessiWeb reference list — the most widel…

  • WCAG implementation
  • progressive enhancement
  • accessibility strategy
  • quality assurance
  • accessibility evaluation
  • organizational accessibility

• HEUA: A Heuristic Evaluation with Usability and Accessibility Requirements to Assess Web Systems

  Ana Luiza Dias, Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes, Paulo Cesar Masiero (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from the University of Sao Paulo presents HEUA (Heuristic Evaluation with Usability and Accessibility), a questionnaire-based instrument that integrates usability and accessibility assessment into a single evaluation framework for web syst…

  • accessibility testing
  • usability testing
  • heuristic evaluation
  • evaluation methods
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG compliance
  • quality assurance

• A Web Compliance Engineering Framework to Support the Development of Accessible Rich Internet Applications

  Carlos A Velasco, Dimitar Denev, Dirk Stegemann, Yehya Mohamad (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2008)

  This paper from Fraunhofer Institute introduces Web Compliance Engineering as a new discipline within Web Engineering, and presents a software framework (imergo) designed to support accessibility compliance for Rich Internet Applications. The authors…

  • web compliance engineering
  • rich internet applications
  • accessibility testing
  • semantic web
  • EARL
  • software engineering
  • quality assurance
  • automated testing

• Evaluation of Assistive Technologies from the perspective of Usability, User Experience and Accessibility: a Systematic Mapping Study

  Tatiany Xavier de Godoi, Guilherme Corredato Guerino, Natasha Malveira C. Valentim (2021) — Proceedings of the XX Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC)

  This systematic mapping study (SMS) investigates how assistive technologies (ATs) are evaluated from the perspectives of usability, user experience (UX), and accessibility — three interrelated but distinct software quality factors. The authors search…

  • assistive technology
  • usability
  • user experience
  • accessibility evaluation
  • systematic review
  • research methodology
  • AT abandonment
  • evaluation instruments
  • quality assurance

• Quantitative Metrics for Measuring Web Accessibility

  Markel Vigo, Myriam Arrue, Giorgio Brajnik, Raffaella Lomuscio, Julio Abascal (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper addresses a fundamental limitation of WCAG conformance levels (A, AA, AAA): they function as binary pass/fail thresholds that cannot distinguish between a site meeting all Priority 1 checkpoints and one meeting all Priority 1 plus nearly a…

  • accessibility metrics
  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • quality assurance
  • web accessibility monitoring
  • WCAG conformance
  • accessibility measurement

• Application of Traditional Software Testing Methodologies to Web Accessibility

  Cynthia C. Shelly, Mike Barta (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  Written by authors from Microsoft and the University of Washington, this paper argues that the evolution of web content from static documents to dynamic Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) demands a corresponding evolution in accessibility testing meth…

  • accessibility testing
  • software development
  • quality assurance
  • shift-left accessibility
  • automated testing
  • WCAG compliance
  • rich internet applications