Literature Reviews

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

• Evaluating the Accessibility of Rich Internet Applications

  Nádia Fernandes, Daniel Costa, Sergio Neves, Carlos Duarte, Luís Carriço (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper addresses a critical gap in automated accessibility evaluation: most tools only assess the initial HTML served to the browser, missing the dynamically generated content that defines modern Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Web application…

  • automated testing
  • web accessibility
  • rich internet applications
  • AJAX
  • dynamic content
  • DOM manipulation
  • accessibility evaluation

• Ajax Live Regions: Chat as a Case Example

  Peter Thiessen, Charles Chen (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents one of the earliest practical implementations of WAI-ARIA live regions, using an accessible Ajax chat application called Reef Chat as a proof of concept. The authors — Peter Thiessen from the University of Toronto's Adaptive Techn…

  • WAI-ARIA
  • ARIA live regions
  • AJAX
  • Web 2.0
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • chat accessibility
  • assistive technology

• Audio Presentation of Auto-Suggest Lists

  Andy Brown, Caroline Jay, Simon Harper (2009) — Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper investigates how to make auto-suggest lists (ASLs) — the dropdown suggestions that appear as users type in search boxes and form fields — accessible through audio for visually impaired users. Part of the SASWAT (Structured Accessibility St…

  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • Web 2.0
  • auto-suggest
  • autocomplete
  • eye tracking
  • AJAX
  • ARIA live regions
  • non-visual interaction
  • audio interface

• Audio Access to Calendars

  Andy Brown, Caroline Jay, Simon Harper (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper addresses a specific but widespread accessibility problem: pop-up calendar date pickers on the web are effectively unusable by people with visual impairments. These JavaScript widgets dynamically insert tabular calendar content into the pa…

  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • Web 2.0
  • date picker
  • audio interface
  • eye tracking
  • AJAX
  • user study
  • widget accessibility
  • non-visual interaction

• WAI-ARIA live regions: eBuddy IM as a case example

  Peter Thiessen, Stephen Hockema (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents a practical case study of implementing WAI-ARIA live regions in eBuddy, a web-based instant messaging application with over 100 million users that aggregated popular IM networks into a single browser client. The paper addresses th…

  • WAI-ARIA
  • live regions
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • instant messaging
  • Rich Internet Applications
  • blind users
  • AJAX

• Three web accessibility evaluation perspectives for RIA

  Nádia Fernandes, Ana Sofia Batista, Daniel Costa, Carlos Duarte, Luís Carriço (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents a large-scale comparative study of web accessibility evaluation across three distinct perspectives that reflect how Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are actually experienced by users. The three evaluation perspectives are: E1, ev…

  • automated evaluation
  • Rich Internet Applications
  • dynamic content
  • AJAX
  • DOM
  • web accessibility evaluation
  • browser processing