Tool-Supported Web Accessibility Evaluation

While there is currently a broad selection of Web accessibility evaluation tools, most of them are designed around post-development quality control principles rather than on-going quality assurance measures. It seems that many of the Web accessibility evaluation tools encourage separated evaluation processes rather than to integrate evaluation tasks into the natural Web development process. It also seems that Web accessibility evaluation tools are designed for a specific type of developers rather than to address the broad diversity of Web content creators. A more effective approach would be to ensure tool support throughout the entire development process, including the design, implementation, and maintenance stages. Ideally the evaluation functionality would merge into the existing development and management systems rather than to be presented through separated Web accessibility evaluation tools. For instance, that design utilities, code editors, content management systems and monitoring tools provide accessibility evaluation functionality that is executed by integrated evaluation tools, plug-ins, or extensions. In order to facilitate this integration of Web accessibility evaluation tools into other types of applications, these tools must be able to exchange accessibility information. Host applications need to delegate and trigger evaluation functionality, and evaluation tools need to support the common protocol for data exchange. These common data formats and protocols are ideally platform-independent, vendor-neutral, and royalty-free to ensure the widest possible support. Furthermore, these formats need to be practical and simple to implement by tool developers. This study proposes a distributed model for tool supported Web accessibility evaluation based on Semantic Web technologies. It explores the requirements and identifies existing promising techniques that enable the construction of collaborative systems that support different types of developers who may be using a variety of tools to develop and maintain accessible Web sites. Although there are challenges in realizing such systems, the approach is principally feasible. There are reasonably low risks and high return on investments for the application developers. Master’s Thesis by Shadi Abou-Zahra (9426418), Technical University of Vienna