A Framework and a Language for Usability Automatic Evaluation of Web Sites by Static Analysis of HTML Source Code

Abstract

Usability guidelines are supposed to help web designers to design usable sites. Unfortunately, studies carried out that applying these guidelines by designers is difficult, essentially because of the way of structuring or fonnulating them. One possible way to help designers in their task is to provide them with tools that evaluate the designed site (during or after design) and alerts them about usability errors. Ideally, these tools would support an appropriate guidelines definition language that enables structuring any guideline in an evaluationoriented fonn. In this paper we propose a framework and guideline definition language for usability (automatic) evaluation.

An extensible environment for guideline-based accessibility evaluation of dynamic Web applications

“…The guideline definition language (GDL) [15] was one of the first languages for guidelines' definition supported by a related framework for static HTML page analysis for automatic usability evaluation.…”

Exploring Automatic CSS Accessibility Evaluation

“…They are based on flexible guidelines definition language which provides mechanisms for specifying testing cases. AccessEnable [13] and Kwaresmi [14,15] are two examples. AccessEnable is a commercial tool which is not longer supported, whereas the GDL guidelines definition language used by Kwaresmi has been recently revised [16].…”

“…Moreover, there are implementation differences among versions of the same browser. There are several mechanisms 15 to solve the CSS related browser bugs. Nevertheless, if those solutions are not applied and a design for a given web page is made for a determined browser, the content of the page can be inaccessible for persons using other browsers.…”

Automated Evaluation of Web Usability and Accessibility by Guideline Review

“…Unfortunately, web site usability and accessibility continue to be a pressing problem [1]. An estimated 90% of sites provide inadequate usability [2], and an estimated 66% of sites are inaccessible to users with disabilities [3]. Although numerous assistive devices, such as screen readers and special keyboards, facilitate use of web sites, these devices may not improve a user's ability to find information, purchase products and complete other tasks on sites.…”