Supporting navigation accessibility requirements in web engineering methods

Web accessibility not only guarantees universal user access to the Web, but also provides interesting benefits for Web development. In order to achieve the goal of Web accessibility, an interesting approach is the incorporation of accessibility requirements into current Web engineering methods. This article presents the Accessibility for Web Applications (AWA) approach with the aim of integrating accessibility into Web engineering methods. The paper also discusses the application of the AWA approach to the Object-Oriented Web Solutions (OOWS) engineering method to produce accessible Web applications with a focus on navigational requirements. In order to demonstrate the practical applicability and usefulness of the approach, a proof of concept is described, the results of which indicating the satisfaction of navigation accessibility requirements. With the application of the AWA approach in the model-driven development (MDD) method, previously-defined OOWS models have been extended with the accessibility criteria, providing resources for the required changes in the process.

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