skip to main content
10.1145/2507065.2507074acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesdocConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

An approach to improve the accessibility and usability of existing web system

Published: 30 September 2013 Publication History

Abstract

The Web is currently the main way of providing computing services, reaching a larger number of users with different characteristics. As the complexity and interactivity of systems is increased, users become more demanding towards all the requirements associated to their distinct needs. Implementing the interaction requirements in the Web has become the main focus of accessibility and usability studies, describing essential design features which provide users with quality, assured systems. The focus on the users reinforced that as the number of users grows and the system became available to a wide variety of users, accessibility and usability features become even more critical to a Web application's success. In this paper, we present ACCESSA, a practical approach to rapidly improve the accessibility of existing Web systems, acting mainly in the interface design with no changes to the functional requirements of systems. The ACCESSA is based on the WCAG 2.0 guidelines and other patterns, choosing the guidelines that present lower implementation costs and represent higher severity accessibility issues.

References

[1]
Alexander, D. Usability and Accessibility: Best friends or Worst enemies' VALA, 2006.
[2]
Baguma, R.; Stone, R. G.; Lubega, J. T.; Weide, T. P. Integrating Accessibility and Functional Requirements. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Part III: Applications and Services (UAHCI '09), Const. Stephanidis (Ed.). Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 635--644.
[3]
Bailey, C.; Pearson, E. Development and trial of an educational tool to support the accessibility evaluation process. In Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 2, 10 pages.
[4]
Bonifácio, B., Fernandes, P., Oliveira, H. A. B. F., Conte, T. UBICUA: A customizable usability inspection approach for Web mobile applications. In Proceedings o the IADIS Internacional Conference on WWW/Internet, 2011.
[5]
Brajnik, G. Beyond Conformance: The Role of Accessibility Evaluation Methods, Proceedings of the 2008 international workshops on Web Information Systems Engineering. Auckland. New Zealand. 2008.
[6]
Conte, T., Massolar, J., Mendes, E., et al. Usability Evaluation based on Web Design Perspectives. In Proceedings of the First Int. Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2007, 146--155.
[7]
Dias, A. L., Fortes, R. P. M.; Masiero, P.C. Increasing the Quality of Web Systems: By Inserting Requirements of Accessibility and Usability. In Proceedings of the 2012 Eighth International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC '12). IEEE Comp. Society, Washington, DC, USA, 224--229.
[8]
Dias, A. L.; Anacleto, J. C.; Silveira, L. M.; Penteado, R. A. D.; Silva, M.A.R.; Buzatto, D.; Villena, J. M. R. Web collaboration motivated by colors emotionally based on common sense. In Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE international conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC'09). IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ, USA, 801--806.
[9]
Fernandes, N.; Carriço, L. A macroscopic Web accessibility evaluation at different processing phases. In: W4A2012 - Communication, 2012, Lyon, France.
[10]
Ferreira, S. B. L.; Nunes, R. R. e-Usabilidade. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. LTC, 179 p., 2008 (in Portuguese).
[11]
Freire, A. P.; Goularte, R.; Fortes, R. P. M. Techniques for developing more accessible Web applications: a survey towards a process classification. In: SIGDOC '07: 25th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication, NY, USA: ACM, pp. 162--169, 2007.
[12]
Jeschke, S.; Pfeiffer, O.; Vieritz, H. Using Web accessibility patterns for Web application development. In Proceedings of the 2009 ACM symposium on Applied Computing (SAC '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 129--135.
[13]
Lazar, J.; Olalere, A. Investigation of best practices for maintaining section 508 Compliance in U.S. federal Web sites. In Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Universal access in human-computer interaction: design for all and eInclusion - Volume Part I (UAHCI'11), Constantine Stephanidis (Ed.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 498--506.
[14]
Lew, P.; Olsina, L.; Zhang, L. Quality, quality in use, actual usability and user experience as key drivers for Web application evaluation. In Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Web engineering (ICWE'10), Boualem Benatallah, Fabio Casati, Gerti Kappel, and Gustavo Rossi (Eds.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 218--232.
[15]
López, J. M.; Pascual, A.; Menduiña, C.; Granollers, T. Methodology for identifying and solving accessibility related issues in Web Content Management System environments. In: W4A2012 Tech. Paper, April 16-17, 2012. Lyon, France.
[16]
Luna, E. R.; Garrigós, I.; Grigera, J.; Winckler, M. Capture and evolution of Web requirements using Webspec. In Proceedings of the 10th Int. Conference on Web engineering (ICWE'10). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 173--188.
[17]
Lunn, D.; Harper, S. Improving the accessibility of dynamic Web content for older users. In Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 16, 2 pages.
[18]
Martín, A.; Cechich, A; Rossi, G. Accessibility at early stages: insights from the designer perspective. In Proceedings of the Int. Cross-Disciplinary Conf. on Web Accessibility (W4A '11). ACM, NY, USA, Article 9, 9 pages.
[19]
Mirri, S.; Salomoni, P.; Prandi, C. Augment browsing and standard profiling for enhancing Web accessibility. In Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 5, 10 pages.
[20]
Nielsen, J. Usability engineering. Boston, MA: Academic Press, 1993. 362p.
[21]
Petrie, H.; Kheir, O. 2007. The relationship between accessibility and usability of websites. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 397--406.
[22]
Power, C.; Freire, A. P.; Petrie, H. e Swallow, D. Guidelines are Only Half of the Story: Accessibility Problems Encountered by Blind Users on the Web. In: CHI'12, May 5-10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA.
[23]
Rocha, H. V.; Baranauskas, M. C. C. Design e avaliação de interfaces humano-computador. São Paulo: IMW-USP, 2000. 242p. (in Portuguese).
[24]
Romen, D.; Svanaes, D. Evaluating Web site accessibility: validating the WAI guidelines through usability testing with disabled users. In: NordiCHI '08: Proceedings of the 5th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction, New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2008, p. 535.
[25]
Sakamoto, S. G.; Silva, L. F.; Miranda, L. C. Identificando barreiras de acessibilidade web em dispositivos móveis: resultados de um estudo de caso orientado pela engenharia de requisitos. In Proceedings of the 11th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC '12). Brazilian Comp. Soc., POA, Brazil, 23--32 (in Portuguese).
[26]
Santos, E. P. B.; Fortes, R. P.M. CMS instance of a tool to support the scheduling of undergraduate s final year project on the Web. In: Simpósio Brasileiro de Sistemas Multimídia e Web - WebMedia, 2010, BH-MG. SBC, 2010, 127--129.
[27]
Santos, E. P. B.; Lara, S. M. A.; Watanabe, W. M.; A. Filho, M. C.; Fortes, R. P. M. Usability evaluation of horizontal navigation bar with drop-down menus by middle aged adults. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Int. Conf. on Design of communication (SIGDOC '11). ACM, NY, USA, 145--150.
[28]
Shelly, C. e Barta, M. Application of Traditional Software Testing Methodologies to Web Accessibility. In: proceedings of the 2010 international cross disciplinary conference on Web accessibility, W4A '10, New York, NY, USA, 2010.
[29]
Shull, F., Carver, J., Travassos, G. H. An empirical methodology for introducing software processes. In 9th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering (2001), 288--296.
[30]
Takagi, H.; Asakawa, C.; Fukuda, K.; Maeda, J. Accessibility designer: visualizing usability for the blind. SIGACCESS Access. Comput. 77--78 (Sept 2003), 177--184.
[31]
Tanaka, E. H. Método Baseado em Heurísticas para avaliação da acessibilidade em sistemas de informação, Doctor Thesis, UNICAMP, Brazil, 2010 (in Portuguese).
[32]
Tanaka, E.H. e Rocha, H.V. Evaluation of Web Accessibility Tools. In Proc. IHC&CLIHC'11, ACM (2011), 272--279.
[33]
Vigo, M. and Brajnik, G. Automatic Web accessibility metrics: Where we are and where we can go. Interacting with Computers 23(2), 137--155. Elsevier. 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2011.01.001
[34]
Waller, A.; Hanson, V. L.; Sloan, D. Including accessibility within and beyond undergraduate computing courses. In Proceedings of the 11th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility (Assets '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 155--162.
[35]
Watanabe, W. M.; Fortes, R. P. M.; Dias, A. L. 2012. Using acceptance tests to validate accessibility requirements in RIA. In Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 15, 10 pages.
[36]
Wöhlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M., Ohlsson, M. C., Regnell, B., Wessl, A. Experimentation in software engineering: an introduction. (2000) Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Cited By

View all
  • (2018)Automatically: An Automated Refactoring Method and Tool for Improving Web Accessibility2018 5th International Conference on Data and Software Engineering (ICoDSE)10.1109/ICODSE.2018.8705894(1-6)Online publication date: Nov-2018
  • (2016)Usability heuristics and accessibility guidelinesProceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/2851613.2851913(213-215)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2016
  • (2015)icebricksProceedings of the 10th International Conference on New Horizons in Design Science: Broadening the Research Agenda - Volume 907310.1007/978-3-319-18714-3_23(361-365)Online publication date: 20-May-2015
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
SIGDOC '13: Proceedings of the 31st ACM international conference on Design of communication
September 2013
200 pages
ISBN:9781450321310
DOI:10.1145/2507065
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 September 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. user requirements
  2. web systems
  3. web usability and accessibility

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

SIGDOC'13
Sponsor:
SIGDOC'13: The 31th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication
September 30 - October 1, 2013
North Carolina, Greenville, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGDOC '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 21 of 38 submissions, 55%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 355 of 582 submissions, 61%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)18
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
Reflects downloads up to 20 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2018)Automatically: An Automated Refactoring Method and Tool for Improving Web Accessibility2018 5th International Conference on Data and Software Engineering (ICoDSE)10.1109/ICODSE.2018.8705894(1-6)Online publication date: Nov-2018
  • (2016)Usability heuristics and accessibility guidelinesProceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/2851613.2851913(213-215)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2016
  • (2015)icebricksProceedings of the 10th International Conference on New Horizons in Design Science: Broadening the Research Agenda - Volume 907310.1007/978-3-319-18714-3_23(361-365)Online publication date: 20-May-2015
  • (2014)Análise do contexto baseado em avaliação de prioridades de diretrizes de acessibilidade em processo de engenharia webCompanion Proceedings of the 13th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.5555/2738165.2738182(47-48)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2014
  • (2014)HEUAProceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference10.1145/2596695.2596706(1-4)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2014

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media