Accessibility Feedback in Mobile Application Reviews: A Dataset of Reviews and Accessibility Guidelines

Abstract

User reviews represent a valuable source of information for developers and researchers to learn about the challenges users are facing when using mobile applications (apps). However, studies analyzing mobile app reviews from an accessibility perspective are limited. This paper aims to better understand how accessibility issues are expressed in reviews to reveal potential associations with accessibility guidelines. To this end, we categorized 1,200 accessibility reviews using accessibility categories from previous studies and the W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). Our results indicate that accessibility user reviews contain accessibility-specific information. This information, while expressed by users in terms that may differ from the technical terms, were still indicative of specific accessibility guideline violations. Our new dataset can potentially be used by app developers to better understand users' accessibility experience.