Persona Based Accessibility Testing: Towards User-Centered Accessibility Evaluation

Abstract

Web authors have a hard time understanding and applying accessibility guidelines. The guidelines are considered too technical, without providing sufficient support for problem solving. This results in bad usability of Web applications for people who rely on accessibility. In the field of designing Web applications and interfaces, the concept of personas, as a representation of the target audience, is well established. Personas are typically used to describe the user on a personal level, with their needs, preferences and habits. In this poster, we illustrate a new workflow approach for accessibility evaluations. We propose persona-based representations of accessibility guidelines for acceptance tests of Web applications, for web authors to gain understanding on the needs of people with disabilities and thus improve the accessibility of Web applications. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.