The literature-review database. Every paper Bob has reviewed (he has read many more), with a short summary, key findings, and tags. Browse, filter, search.
Reinaldo Ferraz · 2024 · Companion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024 (WWW)
This personal essay traces the parallel trajectories of Reinaldo Ferraz's career and the evolution of the web in Brazil, from his first encounter with computers in 1992 through his current role at NIC.br (the Brazilian Network Information Center). Born in 1977 in a São Paulo…
autoethnography · web accessibility · Brazil · web standards · digital accessibility history
Shadi Abou-Zahra, Judy Brewer, Michael Cooper · 2017 · Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)
Written by three W3C staff members, this paper argues that the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to disproportionately benefit people with disabilities — but only if accessibility is built in from the start. The authors examine IoT across three scales: the micro…
Internet of Things · web standards · smart environments · assistive technology · interoperability
Yury Puzis, Yevgen Borodin, Andrii Soviak, Valentyn Melnyk, I. V. Ramakrishnan · 2015 · Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)
This paper argues that the primary barrier to web accessibility is not technical limitations but the high cost of implementing WAI-ARIA, the W3C accessibility specification for rich internet applications. The authors systematically analyze why ARIA implementation is expensive by…
WAI-ARIA · web accessibility · screen readers · web development · accessibility economics
Vagner Figueredo de Santana, Rogério Abreu de Paula · 2013 · Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
This paper presents the first iteration of the Web Accessibility Snapshot (WAS) project, a large-scale automated evaluation of web accessibility conformance across two sets of 1,000 websites each: the Alexa top 1,000 most popular sites and a randomly generated sample of 1,000…
automated testing · WCAG compliance · web accessibility · accessibility metrics · web standards
Shadi Abou-Zahra, Judy Brewer, Shawn Lawton Henry · 2013 · Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
Written by three leaders of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, this paper examines how the shift from desktop to mobile and ubiquitous computing affects the interdependent components that together enable web accessibility. The authors outline eight essential components — web…
mobile accessibility · web standards · WCAG · WAI-ARIA · W3C
John T. Richards, Kyle Montague, Vicki L. Hanson · 2012 · Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012)
This paper investigates the conjecture that improvements in web accessibility have arisen partly as unintentional side effects of changes in web technology and design practices, rather than from deliberate accessibility efforts. Building on a prior 14-year longitudinal study…
web accessibility · WCAG · CSS · semantic markup · search engine optimization
Peter Thiessen · 2011 · Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
This paper examines the interoperability of WAI-ARIA live regions with HTML5 semantic elements, testing whether screen readers can correctly handle dynamic DOM updates when live region attributes are applied to new HTML5 elements like section, nav, and article. The author…
WAI-ARIA · HTML5 · screen readers · dynamic content · AJAX
Luís Carriço, Rui Lopes, Rogério Bandeira · 2011 · Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
This paper proposes a framework for evaluating mobile web accessibility for specific disability profiles by coherently merging three sets of guidelines: WCAG (web accessibility), W3C Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP), and disability classifications from the ICF. The authors argue…
mobile accessibility · blind and low vision · WCAG compliance · accessibility evaluation · web standards
Silvia Pfeiffer, Conrad Parker · 2009 · Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)
This paper documents early efforts to standardize how subtitles, captions, and other accessibility data should be associated with the then-new HTML5 <video> element. Written in 2009 when Firefox, Opera, and Safari were just beginning to implement <video> support, the paper…
video accessibility · HTML5 · captioning · subtitles · web standards
Robert Dodd · 2008 · SIGACCESS Access. Comput.
This paper examines the Dexter Reference Model of Hypertext, published in 1988, and asks whether the foundational assumptions it encodes still serve the needs of accessibility twenty years later. The Dexter Model was created as a superset description of what hypertext systems…
hypertext models · HTML · assistive technology · adaptive content · web standards
Loretta Guarino Reid, Andi Snow-Weaver · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
Written by two members of the WCAG working group (from Google and IBM respectively), this paper explains the major design challenges faced in developing WCAG 2.0 and the strategies adopted to address them. WCAG 1.0, finalized in 1999, was designed for a web of static HTML pages…
WCAG · web standards · accessibility guidelines · WAI · ARIA
Takayuki Watanabe · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
This study by Takayuki Watanabe of Tokyo Woman's Christian University provides empirical evidence for something the accessibility community has long advocated: that proper semantic markup of heading elements (h1-h6) significantly improves both usability and accessibility. The…
semantic HTML · heading elements · screen readers · usability testing · blindness
Ian Horrocks · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
This W4A 2007 keynote paper by Ian Horrocks of the University of Manchester provides an overview of the Semantic Web vision and the progress made toward realizing it, with particular focus on the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The paper opens by identifying fundamental limitations…
semantic web · ontology · OWL · knowledge representation · web standards
Michael Cooper · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
This keynote paper by Michael Cooper of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative examines the accessibility challenges and opportunities created by the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies in the mid-2000s. Cooper frames Web 2.0 as a paradigm shift characterised by greater…
WAI-ARIA · Web 2.0 · Semantic Web · rich internet applications · web standards
Cristian Bernareggi, Dominique Archambault · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
This paper from the @Science European thematic network surveys the state of the art in making mathematical content on the web accessible to visually impaired people, arguing that MathML adoption is the key to unlocking accessibility. The authors explain a fundamental challenge:…
mathematical accessibility · visual impairment · blind users · MathML · braille
Benfeng Chen, Vincent Y. Shen · 2006 · Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)
This paper addresses the problem of transforming legacy, non-standards-compliant web pages into valid HTML with proper separation of content and presentation — a fundamental requirement for web accessibility. In 2006, over 95% of web pages failed W3C validation, largely because…
web standards · HTML validation · CSS · automated remediation · layout tables
Becky Gibson, Richard Schwerdtfeger · 2005 · Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)
This landmark paper from IBM researchers Becky Gibson and Richard Schwerdtfeger describes the foundational work that would become WAI-ARIA. At the time of writing, JavaScript was used on over 50% of websites, yet no accessibility solution existed for the dynamic web components…
web accessibility · JavaScript · ARIA · screen readers · keyboard accessibility
Bob Regan · 2004 · Proceedings of the 2004 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)
Written by Bob Regan of Macromedia (makers of Flash), this paper argues that the poor state of web accessibility represents a "failure of the imagination" — a failure by both the design community to engage with accessibility and by accessibility advocates to inspire designers.…
visual design · accessible design · Flash accessibility · CSS · web standards
18 results.