Engineering Accessible Web Applications. An Aspect-Oriented Approach

Abstract

The development of accessible Web software is complicated for several reasons. Though some of them are technological, the majority are related with the need to compose different and, many times, unrelated design concerns which may be functional as in the case of most of the specific application's requirements, or non-functional such as Accessibility itself. In this paper, we present a novel approach to conceive, design and develop Accessible Web applications in an aspect-oriented manner. In order to reach our goal, we provide some modeling techniques that we specifically developed for handling the nonfunctional, generic and crosscutting characteristics of the Accessibility concerns. Specifically, we have enriched User Interaction Diagrams with integration points, which are used to reason and document Accessibility for activity modeling during user interface design. Then by instantiating a Softgoal Interdependency Graph template with association tables, we work on an abstract interface model (composed by ontology widgets) to obtain a concrete and accessible interface model for the Web application being developed. We use a real application example to illustrate our ideas and point out the advantages of a clear separation of concerns throughout the development life-cycle.

Supporting an Aspect-Oriented Approach to Web Accessibility Design

“…This is possible because aspects, as we have already explained, could be developed once and be reused in different Web projects. We refer the reader to [11] for a complete case study and evaluation.…”

Approach of Agile Methodologies in the Development of Web-Based Software

“…Web-oriented software presents a certain degree of difficulty for its design and development, due to the characteristics that must cover the duration of the life cycle. One of the main complexities is the accessibility of applications, which is due to the development of both the team and the system [3]. According to Torrecilla, Sedeño, Escalona & Mejías, the different development methodologies in web engineering "concentrate essentially on the development phases and do not cover other areas, such as project estimation; quality assurance or team management" [4].…”

An approach to the integration of accessibility requirements into a user interface development method

“…Although some authors provide instructions for the use of these guidelines [24] or propose simple frameworks in an attempt to maximize the benefits gained from the implementation of these guidelines [25], very few address the question of how to incorporate accessibility requirements in the software development process [26]. Where this does occur, individual suggestions are generally offered as opposed to comprehensive solutions [27].…”

“…Nevertheless, very few articles have been found that directly address the question of how to model accessibility according to WCAG, one of which has an aspect-oriented approach [26]. Thus, none of the previous approaches fully satisfy the accessibility standards.…”