Toward an integration of Web accessibility into testing processes

Proceedings of: 5th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion, DSAI 2013. Took place in November 13-15, 2013, in Vigo, Spain. The event web site is http://dsai2013.utad.pt/The goal of this paper is to review the literature in order to understand the implications of accessibility testing processes with the objective to detect potential improvements and developments in the field. Thus, a brief review is presented of the fundamental test processes proposed by the International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB) and the currently available literature about testing processes for evaluating the accessibility of web applications. The result of the review reflects an array of proposals to incorporate accessibility requirements and evaluation tools, but they do not describe a comprehensive testing process at each phase of the development lifecycle of accessible web applications.This research work is supported by the Research Network MAVIR (S2009/TIC-1542) and MULTIMEDICA project (TIN2010-20644-C03-01).Publicad

Features of effective E-commerce web accessibility for the partially blind users

Web accessibility means that anyone at any time with the help of internet should be able to access any website and get full understanding of it and fully interact with it, if necessary. It is an extensive subject referred to by various numbers of writers in the past, pertaining it to other concerns though, this particular project will explain web accessibility problems faced a specific disability group (partially blind) users. The purpose of this project is to find measures of the effective accessibility of E-commerce websites for partially blind users, to propose solution to those problems and to examine that the proposed model provides improved satisfaction. The findings and analytics will be done by conducting face to face interview with the group of partially blind users

IFIP TC 13 Seminar: trends in HCI proceedings, March 26, 2007, Salamanca (Spain)

Actas del 13o. Seminario de la International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), celebrado en Salamanca el 26 de marzo de 2007, sobre las nuevas líneas de investigación en la interacción hombre-máquina, gestión del conocimiento y enseñanza por la Web

Accessibility of E-government Services for Persons with Disabilities in Developing Countries- The Case of Ghana

Several benefits have been attributed to E-government, including the potential to promote independence and belongingness for persons with disabilities (PWD) by enhancing participatory and inclusive governance. Hitherto, government services that required several and long journeys followed by long queues waiting for service at government offices can now be accessed online irrespective of the geographical location via E-government services. As a result, developing countries like Ghana continue to commit resources to the implementation of E-government to harness the associated benefits. Accessibility has been acknowledged, by both practitioners and those in academia, as a key consideration to prevent disparities among citizens which may put PWD at risk of exclusion. However, providing solutions to accessibility challenges for PWD has consistently proven difficult in most E-government implementation projects in developing countries. Therefore, this study investigates the accessibility of Egovernment services for PWD in Ghana with the aim of identifying how key E-government stakeholders perceive accessibility and the contextual drivers that lead to the exclusion of PWD in the development of E-government services. Also, this study seeks to understand if and how these stakeholders and contextual drivers reinforce the exclusionary process. The study employed an interpretive, inductive approach, with sensitising concepts from Egovernment accessibility literature, and the social exclusion framework. Multiple data collection methods were used, namely; observations as a preliminary step to obtaining a better understanding of how the visually impaired use ICTs; interviews as the primary data collection technique from 37 participants; and document analysis. The study involved 3 groups of participants: the visually impaired, E-government web developers and government officers. Data analysis was carried out in two phases- firstly thematic analysis was used to report on perceptions of government officers and developers on accessibility and the experiences of PWD. Contextual drivers impeding accessibility and affecting accessibility experience of PWD were also derived from the thematic analysis. Secondly, E-government and disability policy documents mentioned in interview discussions were analysed using content analysis. The findings of the content analysis were used to validate, clarify and to conduct post-interview checking. The findings show that government officers and developers play a key role in the development of E-government services. Whilst Government officers and developers were identified as powerful agents whose practices determined the accessibility of services that were developed; PWD were side-lined and not involved in the E-government development project. Also, perceptions of government officers and developers on accessibility vary from those of PWD. While government officers and developers believe that with little assistance from third parties PWD can access E-government services, PWD perceive accessibility should offer them the independence to retrieve government information and engage in electronic transactions of their choice. Evidently, accessibility perceptions of E-government implementers differ from that of PWD. Further, the findings show that exclusion of PWD from E-government services is as a result of the intertwining of several contextual drivers, including political, socio-cultural, technological and personal. Political, socio-cultural and technological drivers influence the perceptions and practices of government officers and developers and determine their responses to the accessibility needs of PWD. Personal drivers limit the capabilities of PWD to access Egovernment services and impact on their accessibility experiences. Contextual drivers independently facilitate the exclusion of PWD; however, their interactions with government officers and developers shape their perceptions and constitute crucial exclusionary forces. These exclusionary forces when fed into the development of E-government services reinforce the exclusion of PWD. Given that personal drivers limit the capabilities of PWD, their inabilities to act as change agents reinforce their exclusion. Moreover, power differentials among stakeholders play a vital role in the exclusionary process. The study contributes to better understanding of influences on the E-government development process, how services become inaccessible and the accessibility challenges PWD face. Practically, the study has several implications on the development and implementation of E-government services in developing countries like Ghana. For example, the findings are useful to inform the political leadership on policies and structures to put in place to enhance the accessibility of Egovernment services for PWD

Including heterogeneous web accessibility guidelines in the development process

Abstract. The use of web applications has extremely increased in the last few years. However, some groups of users may experience difficulties when accessing them. Many different sets of accessibility guidelines have been developed in order to improve the quality of web interfaces. Some of them are of general purpose whereas others are specific for user, application or access device characteristics. The existing amount of heterogeneous accessibility guidelines makes it difficult to find, select and handle them in the development process. This paper proposes a flexible framework which facilitates and promotes the web accessibility awareness during all the development process. The basis of this framework is the Unified Guidelines Language (UGL), a uniform guidelines specification language developed as a result of a comprehensive study of different sets of guidelines. The main components of the framework are the guidelines management tool and the flexible evaluation module. Therefore, sharing, extending and searching for adequate accessibility guidelines as well as evaluating web accessibility according to different sets of guidelines become simpler tasks

Une méthode d'inspection automatique de recommandations ergonomiques tout au long du processus de conception des applications Web

Les applications Web actuelles offrent de plus en plus de services. Pour éviter les difficultés d'usage de ces applications, l'utilisabilité doit être assurée. L'évaluation de l'utilisabilité est une tâche qui requiert une expertise en ergonomie logicielle. Cette expertise peut être capitalisée sous forme de recommandations qui sont l'expression d'une connaissance en ergonomie et qui vont aider à l'évaluation. Toutefois, puisqu'il est nécessaire d'appliquer celles-ci de manière systématique, leur inspection manuelle peut s'avérer laborieuse. Pour ne pas être limité par l'inspection manuelle, des outils ont été développés pour guider et supporter l'inspection automatique. Un des avantages de ces outils est que les connaissances en ergonomie y sont directement intégrées. De plus, le manque d'experts et le coût élevé des autres méthodes d'évaluation font que l'inspection automatique est une méthode adaptée. Cependant, ces outils ne peuvent évaluer que l'application finale et si des erreurs sont détectées, des modifications importantes de l'application peuvent avoir lieu. Dans cette thèse nous proposons une méthode d'évaluation basée sur modèles permettant de s'assurer tout au long du cycle de vie de l'utilisabilité des applications Web développées. Nous avons établi une ontologie qui organise les recommandations autour des éléments de l'interface pour identifier précisément quels éléments évaluer à chaque étape du cycle de vie. Cette ontologie est exploitée pour vérifier l'utilisabilité sur les différents artefacts produits dans le cycle de vie. Ces travaux ont été appliqués et validés à l'échelle industrielle sur une plateforme de développement de téléservices.The increasing use of the Web as a software platform together with the advance of technology has promoted Web applications as a start point for delivering information and services. Facing to the ever growing number of users, usability became a major requirement for the universal access of Web applications. In the last years, a number of evaluation methods have been developed by researchers, practitioners and Information Technology companies to help organizations to identify and to fix usability problems. However, usability evaluation of Web sites is not a straightforward process. On one hand, usability evaluation requires some knowledge and expertise in software ergonomics. One the other hand, due to constant evolution of Web application, it is required frequent evaluations to make sure that content updates do not introduce new usability problems. In order to overcome these limitations, much effort has been devoted in the development of tools for automating the inspection of usability and accessibility guidelines. However, tools currently available can only evaluate the final applications. In this thesis we propose a model-based evaluation method that allows ensuring the ergonomic quality of Web applications throughout the lifecycle. We developed an ontology that organizes recommendations around interface elements of a Web application and that allows identifying precisely what elements to evaluate at each phase of the lifecycle. We exploit this ontology to assess the various artifacts produced throughout the lifecycle. This work has been applied and validated at an industrial scale on an e-service development platform