Accessibility in software practice: A practitioner's perspective

Being able to access software in daily life is vital for everyone, and thus accessibility is a fundamental challenge for software development. However, given the number of accessibility issues reported by many users, e.g., in app reviews, it is not clear if accessibility is widely integrated into cu...

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Main Authors: BI, Tingting, XIA, Xin, LO, David, GRUNDY, John C., ZIMMERMANN, Thomas, FORD, Denae
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Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/7631
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/8634/viewcontent/2103.08778.pdf
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spelling sg-smu-ink.sis_research-86342023-01-10T03:58:42Z Accessibility in software practice: A practitioner's perspective BI, Tingting XIA, Xin LO, David GRUNDY, John C. ZIMMERMANN, Thomas FORD, Denae Being able to access software in daily life is vital for everyone, and thus accessibility is a fundamental challenge for software development. However, given the number of accessibility issues reported by many users, e.g., in app reviews, it is not clear if accessibility is widely integrated into current software projects and how software projects address accessibility issues. In this article, we report a study of the critical challenges and benefits of incorporating accessibility into software development and design. We applied a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach for gathering data from 15 interviews and 365 survey respondents from 26 countries across five continents to understand how practitioners perceive accessibility development and design in practice. We got 44 statements grouped into eight topics on accessibility from practitioners’ viewpoints and different software development stages. Our statistical analysis reveals substantial gaps between groups, e.g., practitioners have Direct vs. Indirect accessibility relevant work experience when they reviewed the summarized statements. These gaps might hinder the quality of accessibility development and design, and we use our findings to establish a set of guidelines to help practitioners be aware of accessibility challenges and benefit factors. We suggest development teams put accessibility as a first-class consideration throughout the software development process, and we also propose some remedies to resolve the gaps between groups and to highlight key future research directions to incorporate accessibility into software design and development. 2022-01-01T08:00:00Z text application/pdf https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/7631 info:doi/10.1145/3503508 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/8634/viewcontent/2103.08778.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Databases and Information Systems Software Engineering
institution Singapore Management University
building SMU Libraries
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider SMU Libraries
collection InK@SMU
language English
topic Databases and Information Systems
Software Engineering
spellingShingle Databases and Information Systems
Software Engineering
BI, Tingting
XIA, Xin
LO, David
GRUNDY, John C.
ZIMMERMANN, Thomas
FORD, Denae
Accessibility in software practice: A practitioner's perspective
description Being able to access software in daily life is vital for everyone, and thus accessibility is a fundamental challenge for software development. However, given the number of accessibility issues reported by many users, e.g., in app reviews, it is not clear if accessibility is widely integrated into current software projects and how software projects address accessibility issues. In this article, we report a study of the critical challenges and benefits of incorporating accessibility into software development and design. We applied a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach for gathering data from 15 interviews and 365 survey respondents from 26 countries across five continents to understand how practitioners perceive accessibility development and design in practice. We got 44 statements grouped into eight topics on accessibility from practitioners’ viewpoints and different software development stages. Our statistical analysis reveals substantial gaps between groups, e.g., practitioners have Direct vs. Indirect accessibility relevant work experience when they reviewed the summarized statements. These gaps might hinder the quality of accessibility development and design, and we use our findings to establish a set of guidelines to help practitioners be aware of accessibility challenges and benefit factors. We suggest development teams put accessibility as a first-class consideration throughout the software development process, and we also propose some remedies to resolve the gaps between groups and to highlight key future research directions to incorporate accessibility into software design and development.
format text
author BI, Tingting
XIA, Xin
LO, David
GRUNDY, John C.
ZIMMERMANN, Thomas
FORD, Denae
author_facet BI, Tingting
XIA, Xin
LO, David
GRUNDY, John C.
ZIMMERMANN, Thomas
FORD, Denae
author_sort BI, Tingting
title Accessibility in software practice: A practitioner's perspective
title_short Accessibility in software practice: A practitioner's perspective
title_full Accessibility in software practice: A practitioner's perspective
title_fullStr Accessibility in software practice: A practitioner's perspective
title_full_unstemmed Accessibility in software practice: A practitioner's perspective
title_sort accessibility in software practice: a practitioner's perspective
publisher Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
publishDate 2022
url https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/7631
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/8634/viewcontent/2103.08778.pdf
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