Literature Reviews

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

• Reliability Aware Web Accessibility Experience Metric

  Shuyi Song, Jiajun Bu, Chengchao Shen, Andreas Artmeier, Zhi Yu, Qin Zhou (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper introduces RA-WAEM (Reliability Aware Web Accessibility Experience Metric), a novel approach to measuring website accessibility that incorporates actual user experience from people with disabilities while accounting for the varying reliabi…

  • accessibility metrics
  • user experience
  • accessibility evaluation
  • machine learning
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG compliance
  • automated testing
  • crowdsourcing
  • reliability
  • optimization algorithm
  • China
  • disability inclusion
  • visual impairment
  • motor disability
  • hearing disability

• Semantic Content Analysis Supporting Web Accessibility Evaluation

  Carlos Duarte, Inês Matos, Luís Carriço (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper addresses a fundamental limitation of automated web accessibility evaluation tools: their inability to assess whether text alternatives actually describe the content they refer to. While tools can detect the presence of an alt attribute on…

  • automated testing
  • alternative text
  • semantic analysis
  • machine learning
  • image recognition
  • image description
  • algorithm
  • natural language processing
  • text alternatives
  • accessibility evaluation
  • WCAG compliance
  • web accessibility

• Still Not Readable? An Interactive Tool for Recommending Color Pairs with Sufficient Contrast based on Existing Visual Designs

  Fredrik Hansen, Josef Jan Krivan, Frode Eika Sandnes (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper presents a web-based color contrast tool that goes beyond the pass/fail validation of existing contrast checkers by actively recommending how to fix insufficient color contrast while preserving the designer's original visual …

  • color contrast
  • low vision
  • web design
  • design tools
  • readability
  • accessibility testing
  • WCAG compliance

• A declarative model for accessibility requirements

  Jens Pelzetter (2020) — Proceedings of the 17th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper addresses a fundamental problem in automated accessibility testing: different tools produce inconsistent results because they each implement their own interpretation of WCAG guidelines in code, and the guidelines themselves contain ambigui…

  • automated testing
  • WCAG compliance
  • ACT Rules
  • ontology
  • accessibility evaluation
  • tool development

• Analysis of automated contrast checking tools

  Rafael Almeida, Carlos Duarte (2020) — Proceedings of the 17th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper evaluates the reliability and limitations of three free automated color contrast checking tools: the Color Contrast Accessibility Validator (from the Bureau of Internet Accessibility), WAVE (from WebAIM), and the WCAG Color Contrast Checke…

  • color contrast
  • automated testing
  • accessibility tools
  • WCAG compliance
  • visual accessibility
  • low vision

• Tables on the web accessible? unfortunately not!

  Waqar Haider, Yeliz Yesilada (2020) — Proceedings of the 17th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents the first large-scale systematic study specifically focused on the accessibility of HTML tables on the web. The authors crawled approximately 30,000 web pages sourced from Google, Google Tables, and the Alexa top 10,000 sites, ult…

  • web accessibility
  • HTML tables
  • automated testing
  • WCAG compliance
  • screen readers
  • semantic HTML

• The Use of ADKAR to Instil Change in the Accessibility of University Websites

  Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez (2022) — Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This short paper applies the ADKAR change management model — Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement — to understand what interventions are needed to improve web accessibility at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) in Switzerland. The a…

  • organizational accessibility
  • change management
  • higher education
  • web accessibility
  • accessibility policy
  • WCAG compliance

• 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