Literature Reviews

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

• 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

• CodeA11y: Making AI Coding Assistants Useful for Accessible Web Development

  Peya Mowar, Yi-Hao Peng, Jason Wu, Aaron Steinfeld, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2025) — Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25)

  This paper addresses a persistent problem: despite decades of accessibility standards and tools, ~96% of web pages contain accessibility violations. The authors argue that AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot represent an untapped opportunity bec…

  • web accessibility
  • AI coding assistants
  • developer tools
  • WCAG
  • automated testing
  • GitHub Copilot
  • large language models
  • accessibility education
  • software development

• The Current Status of Accessibility in Mobile Apps

  Shunguo Yan, P. G. Ramachandran (2019) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This large-scale empirical study evaluated the accessibility of 479 Android apps from Google Play across 23 business categories using IBM Mobile Accessibility Checker (MAC), an automated tool that maps accessibility rules to GUI widget categories. Th…

  • mobile accessibility
  • Android
  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • GUI accessibility
  • empirical study

• An Epidemiology-inspired Large-scale Analysis of Android App Accessibility

  Anne Spencer Ross, Xiaoyi Zhang, James Fogarty, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2020) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents the largest analysis of Android app accessibility to date, testing 9,999 free apps from the Rico repository for seven distinct accessibility barriers. Drawing on epidemiological methods, the authors frame accessibility barriers as…

  • mobile accessibility
  • Android
  • TalkBack
  • screen readers
  • automated testing
  • large-scale analysis
  • accessibility barriers

• The Transparency of Automatic Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools: Design Criteria, State of the Art, and User Perception

  Marco Manca, Vanessa Palumbo, Fabio Paternò, Carmen Santoro (2023) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper investigates a critical but often overlooked problem in web accessibility practice: the lack of transparency in automated accessibility evaluation tools. While these tools are widely used to identify WCAG violations, users frequently strug…

  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation tools
  • WAVE
  • axe
  • Lighthouse
  • MAUVE++
  • transparency
  • usability
  • WCAG compliance

• Epidemiology as a Framework for Large-Scale Mobile Application Accessibility Assessment

  Anne Spencer Ross, Xiaoyi Zhang, James Fogarty, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2017) — Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper introduces a novel conceptual framework for understanding mobile app accessibility by drawing an extended metaphor from epidemiology — the study of disease patterns, causes, and effects in populations. The core insight is that app accessib…

  • mobile accessibility
  • accessibility testing
  • automated testing
  • Android
  • accessibility frameworks
  • population-level analysis
  • accessibility barriers
  • app accessibility

• Examining Image-Based Button Labeling for Accessibility in Android Apps through Large-Scale Analysis

  Anne Spencer Ross, Xiaoyi Zhang, James Fogarty, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2018) — Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '18)

  This paper presents the first large-scale analysis of mobile app accessibility, focusing specifically on label-based accessibility barriers in image-based buttons across 5,753 free Android apps. The researchers analyzed three classes of interactive i…

  • mobile accessibility
  • Android
  • screen readers
  • image labeling
  • large-scale analysis
  • automated testing
  • content descriptions

• Proving the validity and accessibility of dynamic web-pages

  R. G. Stone, J. Dhiensa (2004) — Proceedings of the 2004 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from Loughborough University proposes a formal verification approach to proving that dynamically generated web pages will always produce valid and accessible output, regardless of which code path executes at runtime. The authors draw a dir…

  • automated testing
  • dynamic web pages
  • formal verification
  • PHP
  • server-side scripting
  • web accessibility evaluation

• Automatic accessibility evaluation of dynamic web pages generated through XSLT

  André Pimenta Freire, Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes (2005) — Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from researchers at the University of São Paulo addresses a gap in accessibility evaluation tooling: the inability of automated checkers to test dynamically generated web pages. In 2005, tools like Bobby, LIFT, and WAVE could only evaluate…

  • automated testing
  • web accessibility evaluation
  • XML
  • XSLT
  • dynamic web pages
  • accessibility tools

• 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