Toward Fully Accessible Digital Events: Guidelines, Platform Design, and PPTX-to-HTML Conversion
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: With the upcoming enforcement of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) in June 2025, ensuring accessibility in digital events is no longer just a best practice but a legal and ethical obligation. This paper presents a comprehensive approach for developing platforms for accessible digital events compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 and accessibility best practices. We identified the main components of digital events, i.e., video player, presentation viewer, and chat, and defined specific accessibility criteria that they must meet. Then, we developed a tool that converts PowerPoint presentations into accessible HTML pages, enabling all participants, including those using screen readers, to perceive and interact with presentation content directly within the browser. Our goal is to overcome the current limitations of traditional screen sharing. We validate our converter through a series of quantitative and qualitative tests. Results confirm both high parsing accuracy and compliance with WCAG 2.2 Level AA, thus proving the effectiveness of our tool in enhancing accessibility and reducing barriers to participation in digital events.
Authors: Salvatore Gatto, Ombretta Gaggi
Institution: University of Padua
Language: English
Subfield: Human Factors and Ergonomics
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7113898378