PhD Thesis Proposal - Paul Chiou

PhD Thesis Proposal - Paul Chiou
 
Committee Members: William G.J. Halfond (chair), Nenad Medvidovic, Mukund Raghothaman, Gisele Ragusa, and Chao Wang
 
Title: Automated Detection of Keyboard Accessibility Issues in Web Applications
 
Abstract: The internet has become an important part of our daily lives, enabling us to complete everyday and essential tasks online. For the 15% of the global population with disabilities, accessing the internet is critical and can provide access to resources that would otherwise be unavailable. Many people with different disabilities rely on the keyboard interface to access the internet; however, studies found that web applications today largely remain inaccessible to keyboard users. Testing keyboard accessibility is a labor-intensive task currently done manually by skilled practitioners. In this thesis proposal, I propose to use program analysis techniques to automate the keyboard accessibility testing process to alleviate the manual effort involved. I developed a novel approach to automatically detect keyboard accessibility issues that negatively affect disabled users' ability to navigate web pages' user interface. The approach implements a dynamic crawler to build a model that captures a web page's interactivity from a keyboard person's perspective. The approach then analyzes the model to identify the inaccessible behaviors per accessibility guidelines. Finally, I propose to conduct an evaluation to show the approach’s ability to accurately detect these keyboard accessibility issues in real-world web applications

Location: Social Sciences Building (SOS) - B43

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Melissa Ochoa