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A web design framework for improved accessibility for people with disabilities (WDFAD)

Published: 21 April 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as the World Wide Web (WWW) has increasingly become embedded in everyday life and is progressively becoming indispensable for public, business, personal efficiency or even improvement of livelihoods [1]. Web users including People with Disabilities (PWDs) can conveniently undertake a number of tasks that would otherwise be difficult or impossible. But many Web applications such as e-learning, e-commerce and e-government are not accessible to PWDs including the blind. Through Web accessibility guidelines, Web developers can develop Web applications that are accessible to PWDs. However, majority of the available accessibility guidelines are difficult to integrate into existing developer workflows and rarely offer specific suggestions that are developer oriented. In this paper, we propose a Web Design Framework for Improved Accessibility for People with Disabilities (WDFAD). The WDFAD provides precise guidelines on how to develop Web applications that are accessible to PWDs particularly the blind. These are packaged according to the three components of Web applications namely; content, navigation and user interface. Using constructs of the Non Functional Requirements (NFR) Framework, Web accessibility design objectives are represented as primary goals and sub goals. The primary goals represent the high level accessibility design objectives, while the sub goals represent the requirements that need to be met in the Web development process in order to meet each primary goal. WDFAD also illustrates the overlaps between the process of meeting each primary goal. This unveils the optimal ways of achieving Web accessibility during Web design. The precise nature of WDFAD and its packaging according to the main components of Web applications makes Web accessibility requirements potentially easier to understand and apply by Web developers. Web Developers prefer precise and familiar tools due to their busy work life and daily interface and expression in formal instructions. In addition, the global versus local classification of Web accessibility requirements in WDFAD modularizes the web accessibility guidelines hence making them easier to understand, apply and update.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    W4A '08: Proceedings of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A)
    April 2008
    207 pages
    ISBN:9781605581538
    DOI:10.1145/1368044
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 21 April 2008

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    Author Tags

    1. blind
    2. people with disabilities
    3. requirements
    4. web accessibility
    5. web design framework

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 171 of 371 submissions, 46%

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    • (2015)DAEL FrameworkProcedia Computer Science10.1016/j.procs.2015.05.45951:C(1947-1956)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2015
    • (2013)A customized mobile application for a cerebral palsy userProceedings of the 31st ACM international conference on Design of communication10.1145/2507065.2507081(7-16)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2013
    • (2012)A macroscopic web accessibility evaluation at different processing phasesProceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility10.1145/2207016.2207025(1-4)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2012
    • (2012)Web Accessibility for DisabledProceedings of the 2012 10th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology10.1109/FIT.2012.68(342-347)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2012
    • (2010)The Study of CAD/CAE Integrated Technology in Network EnvironmentAdvanced Materials Research10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.145.567145(567-572)Online publication date: Oct-2010
    • (2009)User requirement analysis for a railway ticketing portal with emphasis on semantic accessibility for older usersProceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)10.1145/1535654.1535683(114-122)Online publication date: 20-Apr-2009
    • (2009)Conceptual FrameworkProceedings of the 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 0310.1109/WI-IAT.2009.361(614-617)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2009
    • (2009)Learning Sarawak Local Malay Dialect Using Pedagogical AgentProceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Computer Technology and Development - Volume 0110.1109/ICCTD.2009.81(463-467)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2009
    • (2009)A Usability and Accessibility Design and Evaluation Framework for ICT ServicesProceedings of the 5th Symposium of the Workgroup Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Engineering of the Austrian Computer Society on HCI and Usability for e-Inclusion10.1007/978-3-642-10308-7_7(102-110)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2009

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