Literature Reviews

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

• Online Learning Accessibility during the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Shanna Russ, Foad Hamidi (2021) — Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This literature review examines 14 papers published over the past decade on e-learning accessibility, reframing their findings through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on K-12 education. During the pandemic, elementary, middle, and hi…

  • education accessibility
  • online learning
  • universal design for learning
  • WCAG
  • digital accessibility
  • K-12 education
  • organizational accessibility

• The Transparency of Automatic Accessibility Evaluation Tools

  Parvaneh Parvin, Vanessa Palumbo, Marco Manca, Fabio Paternò (2021) — Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A '21)

  This paper examines a critical but often overlooked problem in automated accessibility testing: the lack of transparency in how evaluation tools operate and present their results. The authors observe that different accessibility evaluation tools freq…

  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • WCAG
  • transparency
  • web accessibility

• Improving Web and Mobile Accessibility Resources for Iranian Designers

  Laleh Nourian (2022) — Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22)

  This doctoral consortium paper presents early-stage research investigating how cultural differences affect accessible design practices, with a specific focus on Iranian designers. The author, Laleh Nourian at Rochester Institute of Technology, frames…

  • global accessibility
  • cultural accessibility
  • postcolonial computing
  • accessibility education
  • Global South accessibility
  • bidirectional interfaces
  • accessible design
  • WCAG

• Machine Learning for Accessible Web Navigation

  Tlamelo Makati (2022) — Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This extended abstract explores how machine learning techniques, particularly reinforcement learning, can be adapted to improve web navigation accessibility in alignment with WCAG Guideline 2.4 (Navigable). The author observes that ML techniques have…

  • machine learning
  • web accessibility
  • reinforcement learning
  • web navigation
  • query optimization
  • WCAG
  • document expansion
  • information retrieval

• An Approach to Teach Accessibility with Gamification

  Mohammad Gulam Lorgat, Hugo Paredes, Tânia Rocha (2022) — Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2022)

  This extended abstract proposes a gamification-based approach for teaching web accessibility to undergraduate Computer Science and Software Engineering students as part of a web design course. The authors identify a gap in accessibility education: wh…

  • gamification
  • accessibility education
  • computer science education
  • WCAG
  • pedagogy

• 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

• A11yPDF: Bridging the Gap to Inclusive PDFs

  Wajdi Aljedaani, Sandeep Kumar Rudhravaram, Akhila Chintham, Abdulrahman Habib, Marcelo M. Eler (2024) — Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This technical note introduces A11yPDF, a free web-based tool for evaluating the accessibility of PDF documents against WCAG 2.2 guidelines. The tool addresses key limitations of existing PDF accessibility checkers such as PDFA Inspector, PAVE, ABBYY…

  • PDF accessibility
  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • document accessibility
  • WCAG
  • tools

• Does ChatGPT Generate Accessible Code? Investigating Accessibility Challenges in LLM-Generated Source Code

  Wajdi Aljedaani, Abdulrahman Habib, Ahmed Aljohani, Marcelo Eler, Yunhe Feng (2024) — Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents the first empirical evaluation of the accessibility of web code generated by ChatGPT (GPT-3.5), examining both how accessible the generated code is and how well the model can fix accessibility violations. The study involved 88 web…

  • web accessibility
  • large language models
  • ChatGPT
  • automated testing
  • WCAG
  • code generation
  • AI accessibility

• A Universal Web Accessibility Feedback Form: A Participatory Design Study

  Adrian Wegener, Kathrin Fausel, Saskia Haug, Alexander Maedche (2024) — Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper addresses a gap in web accessibility practice: while automated testing tools can catch structural violations, they cannot reliably assess the quality of alternative text, the usability of dynamic content, or many other issues that only hum…

  • web accessibility
  • participatory design
  • visual impairments
  • feedback mechanisms
  • user-centered design
  • WCAG
  • screen readers
  • accessibility testing

• Accessibility Guidelines and Standards: Analyzing Stack Overflow Posts

  Asmaa Mansour Alghamdi, Wajdi Aljedaani, Marcelo M. Eler, Stephanie Ludi (2024) — Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A '24)

  This study analyses 5,092 Stack Overflow posts related to web accessibility (from an initial dataset of 8,538 posts tagged with "accessibility" or "WCAG" between 2008 and 2022) to understand the practical challenges developers face when implementing …

  • WCAG
  • web development
  • developer experience
  • accessibility testing
  • screen readers
  • focus management