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Look Ma, no ARIA: generic accessible interfaces for web widgets

Published: 18 May 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Once simple and static, many web pages have now evolved into complex web applications. Hundreds of web development libraries provide ready-to-use custom widgets, which can be further customized to fit the needs of individual web applications. Web developers are supposed to use ARIA specifications to make widgets accessible to screen readers; however, ARIA markup is often used incorrectly and inconsistently, and sometimes even missing in webpages altogether. Given a wide selection of widgets and a lack of proper ARIA support, accessing content of custom widgets in web pages with screen readers has been a challenge for blind users. As a result, blind users cannot benefit from the convenience of using these widgets or, even worse, get stuck on inaccessible content. In our previous work, we showed that custom dynamic widgets could be automatically detected and classified as soon as they appear in web pages. In this paper, we propose to make such widgets accessible by providing generic interfaces for widgets of a particular class. We show how this can be accomplished on the example of Web Chat widget. To demonstrate the usability of the resulting chat interface, we report on the results of a user study with 18 blind screen-reader users.

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  • (2024)Assessing the Accessibility and Usability of Web Archives for Blind UsersLinking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries10.1007/978-3-031-72437-4_12(203-221)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2024
  • (2021)Detecting and localizing keyboard accessibility failures in web applicationsProceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3468264.3468581(855-867)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
  • (2021)Chatbot Accessibility Guidance: A Review and Way ForwardProceedings of Sixth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology10.1007/978-981-16-1781-2_80(919-942)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2021
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      cover image ACM Conferences
      W4A '15: Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference
      May 2015
      214 pages
      ISBN:9781450333429
      DOI:10.1145/2745555
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      Publication History

      Published: 18 May 2015

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      Author Tags

      1. ARIA
      2. blindness
      3. chat
      4. dynamic content
      5. screen reader
      6. widget accessibility
      7. widget recognition

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      W4A '15: International Web for All Conference
      May 18 - 20, 2015
      Florence, Italy

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      W4A '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 11 of 31 submissions, 35%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 171 of 371 submissions, 46%

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      Cited By

      View all
      • (2024)Assessing the Accessibility and Usability of Web Archives for Blind UsersLinking Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries10.1007/978-3-031-72437-4_12(203-221)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2024
      • (2021)Detecting and localizing keyboard accessibility failures in web applicationsProceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3468264.3468581(855-867)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
      • (2021)Chatbot Accessibility Guidance: A Review and Way ForwardProceedings of Sixth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology10.1007/978-981-16-1781-2_80(919-942)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2021
      • (2020)Rotate-and-Press: A Non-visual Alternative to Point-and-Click?HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Universal Access and Inclusive Design10.1007/978-3-030-60149-2_23(291-305)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2020
      • (2019)Challenges of automatically evaluating rich internet applications accessibilityProceedings of the 37th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication10.1145/3328020.3353950(1-6)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2019
      • (2019)Automatic Identification of Widgets and their Subcomponents Based on a Classification Pipeline for DOM Mutation RecordsProceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference10.1145/3315002.3317555(1-10)Online publication date: 13-May-2019
      • (2018)Drop-Down Menu Widget Identification Using HTML Structure Changes ClassificationACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/317885411:2(1-23)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2018
      • (2017)Implementation of sound perception elements for visually impaired people in collaborative and synchronous Web systemsProceedings of the XVI Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3160504.3160569(1-4)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2017
      • (2017)Sound chat: Implementation of sound awareness elements for visually impaired users in web-based cooperative systems2017 International Symposium on Computers in Education (SIIE)10.1109/SIIE.2017.8259677(1-6)Online publication date: Nov-2017

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