Work

Assistive-Technology Aided Manual Accessibility Testing in Mobile Apps, Powered by Record-and-Replay

Year: 2023

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Billions of people use smartphones on a daily basis, including 15% of the world’s population with disabilities. Mobile platforms encourage developers to manually assess their apps’ accessibility in the way disabled users interact with phones, i.e., through Assistive Technologies (AT) like screen readers. However, most developers only test their apps with touch gestures and do not have enough knowledge to use AT properly. Moreover, automated accessibility testing tools typically do not consider AT. This paper introduces a record-and-replay technique that records the developers’ touch interactions, replays the same actions with an AT, and generates a visualized report of various ways of interacting with the app using ATs. Empirical evaluation of this technique on real-world apps revealed that while user study is the most reliable way of assessing accessibility, our technique can aid developers in detecting complex accessibility issues at different stages of development.

Source: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

DOI: 10.1145/3544548.3580679

Authors: Navid Salehnamadi, Ziyao He, Sam Malek

Institution: University of California, Irvine

Language: English

Topic: Digital Accessibility for Disabilities

Subfield: Human Factors and Ergonomics

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Good health and well-being, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: National Science Foundation