Literature Reviews

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

• The Impact of Accessibility Assessment in Macro Scale Universal Usability Studies of the Web

  Rui Lopes, Luís Carriço (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2008)

  This paper introduces Web Interaction Environments (WIEs), a modelling framework for studying universal usability of the web at large scale. The authors argue that existing approaches to accessibility evaluation treat audiences as homogeneous groups,…

  • universal usability
  • audience modelling
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG evaluation
  • Wikipedia
  • large-scale study
  • ontology
  • accessibility metrics

• A Macroscopic Web Accessibility Evaluation at Different Processing Phases

  Nádia Fernandes, Luís Carriço (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper investigates a fundamental question about automated accessibility evaluation: does it matter whether you evaluate a web page as it arrives from the server (before browser processing) or as the user actually experiences it (after browser pr…

  • automated testing
  • large-scale evaluation
  • web accessibility
  • browser processing
  • dynamic content
  • accessibility metrics
  • WCAG evaluation

• On the Testability of WCAG 2.0 for Beginners

  Fernando Alonso, José Luis Fuertes, Ángel Lucas González, Loïc Martínez (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper investigates whether WCAG 2.0 success criteria are truly "reliably human testable" — one of the standard's key design goals — when the evaluators are beginners rather than experts. The W3C defines reliably human testable as meaning that at…

  • WCAG evaluation
  • accessibility education
  • testability
  • inter-rater reliability
  • manual testing
  • accessibility training

• Optimus Web: Selective Delivery of Desktop or Mobile Web Pages

  Nádia Fernandes, Tiago Guerreiro, Diogo Marques, Luís Carriço (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents Optimus Web, a client-side web proxy system that automatically selects and delivers the most accessible version of a website — either its desktop or mobile representation — to blind users. The system uses QualWeb, an automated acc…

  • web accessibility
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • mobile accessibility
  • automated testing
  • content adaptation
  • web proxy
  • WCAG evaluation