Literature Reviews

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

• Testability and Validity of WCAG 2.0: The Expertise Effect

  Giorgio Brajnik, Yeliz Yesilada, Simon Harper (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper investigates the testability and validity of WCAG 2.0 success criteria through an empirical study with 22 accessibility experts and 27 non-experts (university students with 14 hours of accessibility training). Participants evaluated all 61…

  • WCAG 2.0
  • web accessibility
  • conformance review
  • evaluator effect
  • accessibility audit
  • guidelines
  • expertise
  • evaluation methodology

• Developing Hera-FFX for WCAG 2.0

  José L. Fuertes, Emmanuelle Gutiérrez, Loïc Martínez (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper describes the redesign of Hera-FFX, a Mozilla Firefox extension for semi-automatic web accessibility evaluation, to support WCAG 2.0. The original Hera-FFX was built around WCAG 1.0's simpler two-level structure of guidelines and checkpoin…

  • accessibility evaluation
  • evaluation tools
  • WCAG 2.0
  • semi-automatic evaluation
  • browser extensions
  • manual evaluation

• Are Users the Gold Standard for Accessibility Evaluation?

  Amaia Aizpurua, Myriam Arrue, Simon Harper, Markel Vigo (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper critically examines whether user testing with blind users is a reliable "gold standard" for web accessibility evaluation. Drawing on an exploratory study with 11 legally blind participants (10 JAWS users, 1 VoiceOver user, ages 21-64) who …

  • user testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • research methodology
  • bias
  • WCAG 2.0
  • participatory design
  • usability

• Towards Web Accessibility Repair

  Nádia Fernandes (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This doctoral consortium paper presents early-stage research on automatically evaluating and repairing accessibility problems in Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). The author identifies a critical gap: as the web evolves from static pages to complex,…

  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • accessibility repair
  • rich internet applications
  • ARIA
  • WCAG 2.0
  • dynamic content
  • web development tools