Literature Reviews

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

• Proving the validity and accessibility of dynamic web-pages

  R. G. Stone, J. Dhiensa (2004) — Proceedings of the 2004 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from Loughborough University proposes a formal verification approach to proving that dynamically generated web pages will always produce valid and accessible output, regardless of which code path executes at runtime. The authors draw a dir…

  • automated testing
  • dynamic web pages
  • formal verification
  • PHP
  • server-side scripting
  • web accessibility evaluation

• Automatic accessibility evaluation of dynamic web pages generated through XSLT

  André Pimenta Freire, Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes (2005) — Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from researchers at the University of São Paulo addresses a gap in accessibility evaluation tooling: the inability of automated checkers to test dynamically generated web pages. In 2005, tools like Bobby, LIFT, and WAVE could only evaluate…

  • automated testing
  • web accessibility evaluation
  • XML
  • XSLT
  • dynamic web pages
  • accessibility tools

• What's the Web Like If You Can't See It?

  Chieko Asakawa (2005) — Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This landmark paper by Chieko Asakawa of IBM Japan traces the evolution of non-visual web access from the early 1990s through 2005, drawing extensively on the author's own experience as a blind researcher and developer. Asakawa chronicles the develop…

  • screen readers
  • voice browsers
  • alternative text
  • skip navigation
  • blindness
  • non-visual web access
  • disability simulation
  • web accessibility evaluation
  • compliance versus usability

• Three web accessibility evaluation perspectives for RIA

  Nádia Fernandes, Ana Sofia Batista, Daniel Costa, Carlos Duarte, Luís Carriço (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents a large-scale comparative study of web accessibility evaluation across three distinct perspectives that reflect how Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are actually experienced by users. The three evaluation perspectives are: E1, ev…

  • automated evaluation
  • Rich Internet Applications
  • dynamic content
  • AJAX
  • DOM
  • web accessibility evaluation
  • browser processing

• Measuring and comparing the reliability of the structured walkthrough evaluation method with novices and experts

  Christopher Bailey, Elaine Pearson, Voula Gkatzidou (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates the reliability of the Structured Walkthrough evaluation method — a systematic approach to manual accessibility evaluation embedded in the Accessibility Evaluation Assistant (AEA) tool. The AEA contains 48 accessibility heuris…

  • accessibility testing
  • web accessibility evaluation
  • WCAG compliance
  • evaluator effect
  • accessibility education
  • heuristic evaluation

• Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity? W4A -- International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility 2007

  Yeliz Yesilada, Simon Harper (2008) — SIGACCESS Access. Comput.

  This is the conference report for the 4th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A) 2007, held at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Canada, co-located with the World Wide Web (WWW) conference. The report summariz…

  • Web 2.0
  • semantic web
  • conference report
  • ARIA
  • assistive technology
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • web accessibility evaluation
  • accessibility APIs

• A multi-method evaluation of university website accessibility: Foregrounding user-centred design, mining source code and using a quantitative metric

  Tahani Alahmadi (2017) — Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This extended abstract presents a multi-method model for evaluating the accessibility of university websites, with particular attention to the needs of students with sensory disabilities including deaf, visually impaired, and deafblind users. The res…

  • web accessibility evaluation
  • higher education
  • user-centred design
  • web mining
  • assistive technologies
  • sensory disabilities
  • quantitative metrics

• The Crowd Work Accessibility Problem

  Saiganesh Swaminathan, Kotaro Hara, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2017) — Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper examines a largely overlooked accessibility problem: the inaccessibility of crowdsourcing tasks themselves. While crowd work platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) offer potential employment benefits for people with disabilities — fle…

  • web accessibility evaluation
  • crowdsourcing
  • employment
  • disability employment
  • WCAG compliance
  • screen readers
  • keyboard accessibility

• A Task Assignment Strategy for Crowdsourcing-Based Web Accessibility Evaluation System

  Liangcheng Li, Can Wang, Shuyi Song, Zhi Yu, Fenqin Zhou, Jiajun Bu (2017) — Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper addresses a practical challenge in scaling web accessibility evaluation: how to effectively assign manual evaluation tasks to volunteer crowdsource workers with varying levels of expertise. While automated tools can check many accessibilit…

  • web accessibility evaluation
  • crowdsourcing
  • machine learning
  • automated testing
  • conformance testing
  • task assignment