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Exploring the Intersections of Web Science and Accessibility

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Human Systems Engineering and Design II (IHSED 2019)

Abstract

In this paper, we survey several ongoing research threads that can be applied to web accessibility solutions. We focus on the challenges with automatically evaluating the accessibility violations in websites that are built primarily with JavaScript. There are several research efforts that – in aggregate – provide insight into how users interact with websites; how to automate and simulate user interactions; how to record the results of user interactions; and how to analyze, evaluate, and map resulting website content to determine the relative accessibility. We close with a discussion on the convergence of these threads and the future of automated, web-based accessibility evaluation, and assurance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A representation of a web page is what users see in the browser after visiting the page.

  2. 2.

    As cited by Kanta, government accessibility varies widely [18].

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Sanith Wijesinghe, the Innovation Area Lead funding this research effort as part of MITRE’s internal research and development program (the MIP). We also thank the numerous collaborators that have assisted with the maturation of our research project. © 2019 The MITRE Corporation. Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Case Number 19-1636.

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Correspondence to Trevor Bostic .

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Bostic, T., Stanley, J., Higgins, J., Chudnov, D., Bradley Montgomery, R.L., Brunelle, J.F. (2020). Exploring the Intersections of Web Science and Accessibility. In: Ahram, T., Karwowski, W., Pickl, S., Taiar, R. (eds) Human Systems Engineering and Design II. IHSED 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1026. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27928-8_73

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