Literature Reviews

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

• Hunting for Headings: Sighted Labeling vs. Automatic Classification of Headings

  Jeremy T. Brudvik, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Anna C. Cavender, Richard E. Ladner (2008) — Assets '08: Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper investigates the problem of missing heading markup in web pages — a significant accessibility barrier for blind screen reader users who rely on heading navigation (h1-h6 tags) to quickly skip through page content rather than reading linear…

  • web accessibility
  • headings
  • screen readers
  • machine learning
  • semantic HTML
  • blind users
  • automated accessibility repair

• Accessibility for Simple to Moderate-Complexity DHTML Web Sites

  Cynthia C. Shelly, George Young (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This detailed technical paper from Microsoft provides practical design and coding techniques for making Dynamic HTML and AJAX applications accessible using the browser and assistive technology capabilities available in 2007 — deliberately without rel…

  • web accessibility
  • DHTML
  • AJAX
  • JavaScript
  • keyboard accessibility
  • screen readers
  • semantic HTML
  • web development
  • assistive technology
  • dynamic content

• Using a CMS to Create Fully Accessible Websites

  Sébastien Rainville-Pitt, Jean-Marie D'Amour (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This demonstration paper presents Edimaster Plus, a content management system developed over five years by Netic Hypermedia Inc. in Quebec, Canada, designed from the ground up to generate fully accessible websites meeting all three WAI priority level…

  • web accessibility
  • content management systems
  • authoring tools
  • WCAG compliance
  • assistive technology
  • screen readers
  • accessible by default
  • semantic HTML

• Accessibility in Non-Professional Web Authoring Tools: A Missed Web 2.0 Opportunity?

  Christopher Power, Helen Petrie (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the University of York evaluates the accessibility of Apple's iWeb, a non-professional web authoring tool representative of a new generation of Web 2.0 design applications aimed at non-technical users creating personal websites, blogs…

  • web accessibility
  • authoring tools
  • WCAG compliance
  • Web 2.0
  • semantic HTML
  • alternative text
  • screen readers
  • content creation
  • accessible by default

• Accessible Blog Posts with Windows Live Writer

  Cynthia Shelly, Becky Pezely (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This short paper from Microsoft describes how Windows Live Writer, a desktop blogging application installed on over 20 million machines with approximately 100,000 daily active users, was designed to produce accessible HTML output without requiring au…

  • web accessibility
  • authoring tools
  • blogging
  • semantic HTML
  • alternative text
  • WCAG compliance
  • content creation
  • accessible by default

• Experimental Evaluation of Usability and Accessibility of Heading Elements

  Takayuki Watanabe (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This study by Takayuki Watanabe of Tokyo Woman's Christian University provides empirical evidence for something the accessibility community has long advocated: that proper semantic markup of heading elements (h1-h6) significantly improves both usabil…

  • semantic HTML
  • heading elements
  • screen readers
  • usability testing
  • blindness
  • content structure
  • web standards
  • user study

• Designing Beneath the Surface of the Web

  Sarah Horton (2006) — Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper reframes web accessibility as fundamentally a source code design problem, arguing that designers focus almost exclusively on the visual "surface" of web pages — colors, typography, layouts — while neglecting the underlying code layer that …

  • semantic HTML
  • web design
  • universal usability
  • nonvisual access
  • screen readers
  • mobile accessibility
  • document structure
  • design principles

• Efficient and Effective Information Finding on Small Screen Devices

  Pauli P. Y. Lai (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper proposes a reverse engineering approach for automatically adapting desktop-oriented webpages for efficient information seeking on small-screen mobile devices. The core contribution is a "semantic-DOM tree" model that analyzes the relations…

  • mobile accessibility
  • content adaptation
  • responsive design
  • web accessibility
  • information architecture
  • semantic HTML
  • machine learning

• 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

• Accessmonkey: Enabling and Sharing End User Accessibility Improvements

  Jeffrey P. Bigham (2007) — SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing

  This paper proposes the Accessmonkey Framework, a collaborative platform for creating, sharing, and applying user-generated web accessibility improvements. The system addresses the reality that blind users frequently encounter inaccessible web conten…

  • web accessibility
  • screen reader
  • browser extension
  • crowdsourcing
  • user scripting
  • ARIA
  • alt text
  • semantic HTML