Is your web page accessible?

TLDR

Web accessibility remains a critical yet challenging goal for developers and designers. The study compares methods for detecting accessibility issues for blind users. The authors compared a laboratory study with blind users, an automated tool, expert reviews by designers with and without screen readers, and remote testing by blind users to evaluate accessibility detection techniques. Developers using a screen reader consistently identified about 50 % of known problems, while remote testing was least effective, yet each method offered complementary strengths and weaknesses.

Abstract

Web access for users with disabilities is an important goal and challenging problem for web content developers and designers. This paper presents a comparison of different methods for finding accessibility problems affecting users who are blind. Our comparison focuses on techniques that might be of use to Web developers without accessibility experience, a large and important group that represents a major source of inaccessible pages. We compare a laboratory study with blind users to an automated tool, expert review by web designers with and without a screen reader, and remote testing by blind users. Multiple developers, using a screen reader, were most consistently successful at finding most classes of problems, and tended to find about 50% of known problems. Surprisingly, a remote study with blind users was one of the least effective methods. All of the techniques, however, had different, complementary strengths and weaknesses.