Improving accessibility of Web interfaces: refactoring to the rescue

Universal access should be a target for all public Web sites. However, it is very hard to achieve, and even Web applications that comply with accessibility standards may still lack usability for disabled users. This paper proposes refactoring as an essencial technique to incrementally improve the ac...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Garrido, Alejandra, Rossi, Gustavo Héctor, Medina Medina, Nuria, Grigera, Julián, Firmenich, Sergio Damian
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2013
País:Argentina
Institución:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repositorio:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/33837
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/33837
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Accessibility
Web Applications
Refactoring
Reengineering
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1.2
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1
Descripción
Sumario:Universal access should be a target for all public Web sites. However, it is very hard to achieve, and even Web applications that comply with accessibility standards may still lack usability for disabled users. This paper proposes refactoring as an essencial technique to incrementally improve the accessibility and usability of a Web interface. Some accessibility refactorings are described and classified by the problems that each refactoring addresses. The way mainstream Web sites struggle with accessibility is illustrated, and two evaluations of email clients are presented as empirical evidence of the significance of accessibility refactorings at a low implementation cost.