KEYBOARD NAVIGATION MECHANISMS IN WIDGETS: AN INVESTIGATION ON ARIA'S IMPLEMENTATIONS
Keywords:
Web accessibility, ARIA, Widgets, Keyboard Navigation, Navigation MechanismsAbstract
This study presents an investigation on how keyboard accessibility has been delivered in RIA - Rich Internet Applications. We conducted an evaluation on 32 websites which contained Tab Widgets and 74 websites which contained Menu Widgets, from the 150 websites of Alexa's top most accessed websites list. The evaluation process consisted of checking if the Widgets implemented ARIA - Accessible Rich Internet Applications requirements, like the use of role/state semantic attributes and presentation of keyboard interaction strategies. The results showed that, even though the ARIA specication achieved the status of W3C Candidate Recommendation in 2011 and W3C Recommen- dation in 2014, few websites implemented Tab and Menu Widgets according to ARIA in the Web. The study also identied alternative keyboard navigation mechanisms that are accessible to Assistive Technologies users, despite the disadvantages they might rep- resent. Moreover, the study proposes a framework to classify these alternative keyboard navigation mechanisms and map the technological requirements which need to be ad- dressed in order to make the Tab and Menu Widgets implement the ARIA specication.
Downloads
References
J.J. Garrett (2005), Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications. URL
http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-applications/
P. Fraternali, S. Comai, A. Bozzon, G.T. Carughi (2010), Engineering rich internet applications
with a model-driven approach, ACM Trans. Web 4(2), 1
C.A. Velasco, D. Denev, D. Stegemann, Y. Mohamad (2008), A web compliance engineering frame-
work to support the development of accessible rich internet applications, in W4A '08: Proceedings
of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A) (ACM, New
York, NY, USA, 2008), pp. 45{49
K.U. Schmidt, J. Dor
inger, T. Rahmani, M. Sahbi, L. Stojanovic, S.M. Thomas (2008), An user
interface adaptation architecture for rich internet applications, in ESWC'08: Proceedings of the
th European semantic web conference on The semantic web (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg,
, pp. 736{750
J. Kluge, F. Kargl, M. Weber (2007), The E ects of the AJAX Technology on Web Application
Usability, in 3rd International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WebIST
(Barcelona, Spain, 2007)
W.M. Watanabe, R.P.M. Fortes, A.L. Dias (2012), Using acceptance tests to validate accessibility
requirements in RIA, in Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2012), W4A '12, pp. 15:1{15:10
P. Thiessen, C. Chen (2007), Ajax live regions: ReefChat using the re vox screen reader as a case
example, in W4A '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web
accessibility (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2007), pp. 136{137
W3C (2011), Accessible Rich Internet Applications - Version 1.0. W3C Candidate Recommendation.
URL http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/
B. Gibson (2007), Enabling an accessible web 2.0, in Proceedings of the 2007 international cross-
disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A'07) (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2007), pp.
{6
W.M. Watanabe, A.C. Jr., V.R. de Uzeda, R.P.M. Fortes, T.A.S. Pardo, S.M. Alusio (2009), Fa-
cilita: Reading Assistance for Low-literacy Readers, in ACM SIGDOC 2009 (ACM, Bloomington,
IN, USA, 2009), pp. 29{36
A.P. Freire, C.M. Russo, R.P. de Mattos Fortes (2008), The perception of accessibility in Web
development by academy, industry and government: a survey of the Brazilian scenario, New Review
of Hypermedia and Multimedia 14(2), 149
A.P. Freire, T.J. Bittar, R.P.M. Fortes (2008), An approach based on metrics for monitoring
web accessibility in Brazilian municipalities web sites, in SAC '08: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM
symposium on Applied computing (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2008), pp. 2421{2425
W.M.Watanabe, R.J. Geraldo, R.P. de Mattos Fortes (2014), Keyboard Navigation Mechanisms in
Tab Widgets: An Investigation on ARIA's Conformance, in Proceedings of the 29th Annual ACM
Symposium on Applied Computing (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2014), SAC '14, pp. 721{726
W3C (2013), WAI-ARIA 1.0 Authoring Practices - An author's guide to understanding
and implementing Accessible Rich Internet Applications. W3C Working Draft. URL
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/
E.V. Munson, M.d.G. Pimentel (2008), Specialized Documents, in Web Accessibility, Human-
Computer Interaction Series, vol. 4 (Springer London, 2008), Human-Computer Interaction Series,
vol. 4, pp. 274{285
P. Thiessen, S. Hockema (2010), WAI-ARIA live regions: eBuddy IM as a case example, in Pro-
ceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)
(ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2010), W4A '10, pp. 33:1{33:9
B. Gibson, R. Schwerdtfeger (2005), DHTML accessibility: solving the JavaScript accessibility
problem, in Proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and
accessibility (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2005), Assets '05, pp. 202{203
W3C (2008), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. W3C Recommendation. URL
T.W.S. Project, The JavaScript Manifesto. URL http://www.webstandards.org/action/dstf/manifesto/
C.A. Hall (2009), Web presentation layer bootstrapping for accessibility and performance, in Pro-
ceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)
(ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2009), W4A '09, pp. 67{74
V.L. Hanson, J.T. Richards (2013), Progress on Website Accessibility?, ACM Trans. Web 7(1),
:1
V.F. de Santana, R.A. de Paula (2013), Web Accessibility Snapshot: An E ort to Reveal Coding
Guidelines Conformance, in Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference
on Web Accessibility (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2013), W4A '13, pp. 2:1{2:4
N. Fernandes, D. Costa, S. Neves, C. Duarte, L. Carrico (2012), Evaluating the accessibility of rich
internet applications, in Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2012), W4A '12, pp. 13:1{13:4
N. Fernandes, A.S. Batista, D. Costa, C. Duarte, L. Carrico (2013), Three web accessibility evalu-
ation perspectives for RIA, in Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference
on Web Accessibility (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2013), W4A '13, pp. 12:1{12:9
