Literature Reviews

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

• Automatic Role Detection of Visual Elements of Web Pages for Automatic Accessibility Evaluation

  Carlos Duarte, Ana Salvado, M. Elgin Akpinar, Yeliz Yeşilada, Luís Carriço (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This short paper presents an approach to automatically detect the visual roles of web page elements — specifically menus and lists — to enable automated accessibility evaluation tools to assess WCAG techniques that require understanding an element’s …

  • automated testing
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG
  • web page segmentation
  • navigation
  • screen readers
  • WAI-ARIA
  • menus
  • accessibility evaluation
  • QualWeb

• Web Accessibility Evaluation in a Crowdsourcing-Based System with Expertise-Based Decision Strategy

  Shuyi Song, Jiajun Bu, Ye Wang, Zhi Yu, Andreas Artmeier, Lianjun Dai, Can Wang (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This short paper presents a crowdsourcing-based web accessibility evaluation system that addresses the scalability bottleneck in manual accessibility evaluation: expert evaluators are scarce (training takes years) and expensive, yet many WCAG checkpo…

  • web accessibility
  • crowdsourcing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • WCAG
  • automated testing
  • manual evaluation
  • expertise
  • quality assurance
  • China

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Web Accessibility: Is Conformance Evaluation a Way Forward?

  Shadi Abou-Zahra, Judy Brewer, Michael Cooper (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This short paper from three W3C/WAI staff members explores the potential and limitations of applying artificial intelligence to improve web accessibility, proposing accessibility conformance evaluation as a strategic pathway to accelerate AI adoption…

  • artificial intelligence
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG
  • automated testing
  • machine learning
  • image recognition
  • alternative text
  • conformance evaluation
  • W3C
  • accessibility standards

• Automatic Identification of Widgets and their Subcomponents Based on a Classification Pipeline for DOM Mutation Records

  Eduardo Henrique Rizo, Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes, Humberto Lidio Antonelli, Willian Massami Watanabe (2019) — Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents a machine learning pipeline for automatically classifying web widgets (specifically dropdown menus) and their subcomponents by analyzing DOM mutation records — the dynamic changes that occur in a web page's HTML structure when use…

  • WAI-ARIA
  • machine learning
  • web accessibility
  • automated testing
  • widgets
  • DOM
  • rich internet applications
  • screen reader
  • accessibility evaluation
  • dropdown menu

• Automated Generation of Accessible PDF

  Shaban Zulfiqar, Safa Arooj, Umar Hayat, Suleman Shahid, Asim Karim (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

  This demonstration paper presents AGAP (Automated Generation of Accessible PDF), an open-source tool that automates the generation of accessible PDFs from LaTeX source files while making the authoring process itself accessible to people with vision i…

  • PDF accessibility
  • document accessibility
  • screen readers
  • STEM accessibility
  • automated testing
  • blindness and low vision
  • web accessibility
  • software development

• The Compliance Mindset: Exploring Accessibility Adoption in Client-Based Settings

  Emma L. Holliday (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

  This short paper investigates how web accessibility is adopted in client-based settings such as consultancies and freelance work, where practitioners must navigate the tension between their own accessibility knowledge and client priorities. The study…

  • web accessibility
  • organizational accessibility
  • compliance
  • WCAG
  • automated testing
  • usability testing
  • accessibility culture
  • design methodology

• 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

• Web Accessibility Testing for Singapore Government e-Services

  Zui Young Lim, Jia Min Chua, Kaiting Yang, Wei Shin Tan, Yinn Chai (2020) — Proceedings of the 17th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from Singapore's Government Technology Agency presents a customized automated accessibility testing tool designed specifically for government e-service developers. The authors identified two core problems: Singapore's low accessibility mat…

  • automated testing
  • web accessibility
  • government services
  • accessibility evaluation
  • CI/CD
  • contextual inquiry
  • agile development