Literature Reviews

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

• When Headers Are Not There: Design and User Evaluation of an Automatic Topicalisation and Labelling Tool to Aid the Exploration of Web Documents by Blind Users

  Jorge Sassaki Resende Silva, André Pimenta Freire, Paula Christina Figueira Cardoso (2022) — Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2022)

  This paper addresses a fundamental problem for blind screen reader users: what happens when web documents lack proper heading markup, eliminating one of the primary navigation strategies available to them. The researchers designed and evaluated a too…

  • screen readers
  • headings
  • natural language processing
  • text segmentation
  • blind users
  • web accessibility
  • information seeking
  • cognitive load

• Towards Real-Time Measurements of Internet Health: Optimizing Large-Scale Web Accessibility Evaluations

  Luís P. Carvalho, Tiago Guerreiro, Shaun Lawson, Kyle Montague (2023) — Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2023)

  This paper investigates how to optimize page sampling strategies for large-scale web accessibility evaluations, aiming to make near real-time measurements of Internet Health feasible. Current large-scale accessibility studies are financially and time…

  • web accessibility
  • large-scale evaluation
  • automated testing
  • internet health
  • WCAG
  • axe-core
  • page sampling

• Notably Inaccessible — Data Driven Understanding of Data Science Notebook (In)Accessibility

  Venkatesh Potluri, Sudheesh Singanamalla, Nussara Tieanklin, Jennifer Mankoff (2023) — Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '23)

  This paper presents the first large-scale analysis of the accessibility of computational notebooks — interactive documents combining code, text, and data visualizations that have become the standard tool for data science work. The researchers analyze…

  • computational notebooks
  • data science
  • screen readers
  • blind and visually impaired
  • data visualization
  • alternative text
  • automated testing
  • web accessibility

• A platform to check website compliance with web accessibility standards

  Reinaldo Ferraz, Ana Duarte, João Bárbara, Adriano C.M. Pereira, Wagner Meira (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This short paper presents the TIC Web Acessibilidade platform, a comprehensive system for evaluating and monitoring the accessibility of Brazilian government websites at scale. Developed by NIC.br (the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee's executiv…

  • automated testing
  • web accessibility
  • government accessibility
  • accessibility monitoring
  • web crawler
  • compliance
  • Global South accessibility

• Towards Optimised Population Sourcing for Web Accessibility Evaluation

  Alexander Hambley (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A '23)

  This doctoral consortium extended abstract presents a PhD project proposing a novel framework and prototypical tool for optimising web accessibility evaluation through statistically representative page sampling. The work is the single-author companio…

  • automated accessibility testing
  • web accessibility
  • accessibility evaluation
  • web crawling
  • machine learning
  • WCAG compliance
  • accessibility standards
  • large-scale analysis

• OPTIMAL-EM: Optimised Population Sourcing for Web Accessibility Evaluation

  Alexander Hambley, Yeliz Yesilada, Markel Vigo, Simon Harper (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A '23)

  This extended abstract presents OPTIMAL-EM, a prototypical tool and framework designed to optimise the web accessibility evaluation process by systematically selecting representative pages from a website for auditing. Currently, accessibility evaluat…

  • automated accessibility testing
  • web accessibility
  • accessibility evaluation
  • web crawling
  • machine learning
  • WCAG compliance
  • accessibility standards
  • large-scale analysis

• Accessibility Metatesting: Comparing Nine Testing Tools

  Jonathan Robert Pool (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A '23)

  This short paper presents a systematic empirical comparison of nine automated web accessibility testing tools that are amenable to integration into multi-tool testing regimes (free or nearly free, controllable via APIs or NPM packages, and comprehens…

  • automated accessibility testing
  • web accessibility
  • accessibility testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • WCAG compliance
  • developer tools
  • accessibility violations
  • tools

• Understanding and Improving Drilled-Down Information Extraction from Online Data Visualizations for Screen-Reader Users

  Ather Sharif, Andrew M. Zhang, Katharina Reinecke, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A '23)

  This extended abstract presents enhancements to VoxLens, an open-source JavaScript plug-in that improves the accessibility of online data visualizations for screen-reader users (SRUs) through a multimodal approach. Over 7.6 million people in the Unit…

  • screen readers
  • data visualization accessibility
  • alternative text
  • sonification
  • blind and low vision
  • web accessibility
  • non-visual interaction
  • information retrieval
  • accessible maps

• A More Accessible Web with Natural Language Interface

  Xiang Deng (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This extended abstract proposes building a general natural language interface (NLI) for the Web that would allow users to express their needs in plain language and have the system automatically carry out the required actions on any website. The appro…

  • natural language processing
  • web accessibility
  • web automation
  • semantic parsing
  • large language models
  • digital divide

• QualState: Finding Website States for Accessibility Evaluation

  Filipe Rosa Martins, Letícia Seixas Pereira, Carlos Duarte (2024) — Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper introduces QualState, a web crawling tool designed to solve a fundamental limitation of automated accessibility evaluation: the inability to test dynamic content in Single Page Applications (SPAs). SPAs like Facebook, Google Maps, and Gmai…

  • automated testing
  • web accessibility
  • single page applications
  • web crawling
  • accessibility evaluation
  • dynamic content
  • DOM