Exploring the Intersections of Web Science and Accessibility

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.