1. Raphael Clegg-Vinell, Chris Bailey, Voula Gkatzidou.
AbilityNet.
Email: chris.bailey@abilitynet.org.uk
raphael.clegg-vinell@abilitynet.org.uk
Twitter: @Raphael_CV; @chrisbailey000; @vouloula
Investigating the Appropriateness and
Relevance of Mobile Web Accessibility
Guidelines

2. The Overall Problem
“We haven‟t solved the problem of web accessibility”
- Jeff Bigham, W4A 2013.
A New Problem
 Mobile Accessibility:
Small Screens
Environmental Factors
Multiple, minor impairments

3. Mobile Accessibility
 Increasing importance to understand accessibility of
mobile web content (Carrico et al, 2011).
 Clients request WCAG 2.0 and MWBP 1.0 CR for internal
„sign off‟.
 Important for guiding developers in developing to support
accessibility (Kelly et al, 2007).
 Lack of evaluation support tools for WCAG 2.0 and
MWBP on mobile devices.

4. User Testing Sessions
 User testing is often requested as a supplement or
replacement for expert reviews.
 Research supports this approach:
 Developers should obtain severity ratings from users or an
expert rather than relying on those provided by guidelines
(Harrison & Petrie, 2006).
 The severity of an issue cannot be accurately rated without
contextualising the circumstances under which the problem
occurs. Contextual considerations include what the potential
barrier is, the type of user affected and what their browsing
capabilities are (Brajnik, 2008).

5. Testing Methodology
 Data taken from results of 5 mobile testing sessions.
 Participants:
 Dyslexia
 Deaf (BSL)
 Low Vision
 Mobile Screen Reader User
 Older User
 Attention/Memory
 6 – 8 tasks
 60 – 90 minute session.

6. Determining the Severity of Issues
The three factors to determine the severity rating:
 The frequency with which the problem occurs (number of
users).
 The impact of the problem if it occurs.
 The persistence of the problem.
– Nielsen, J.

7. Typical Issues

8. Case Study – Mapping Issues to Guidelines
Banding issues into three categories:
1. Issues which clearly correspond to guidelines under WCAG
and or MWBP 1.0.
2. Issues which cannot be easily associated to guidelines under
WCAG 2.0 or MWBP 1.0 without expert interpretation from an
experienced consultant or developer.
3. Issues which do not fall under WCAG 2.0 or MWBP 1.0 but
still cause a significant accessibility barrier.

9. 1. Issues which Clearly Correspond to
Guidelines
 Users frequently reported issues relating to colour contrast.
Clearly corresponds to:
 WCAG 2.0 AA 1.4.3 Contrast
 MWBP 1.0 [COLOR CONTRAST]
 Success Criteria 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) is an AA issue – we
reported this as High Priority.
 Colour contrast is persistent, high frequency, high impact.

10. 2. Issues which Require Expert Interpretation
 Finger pinch zoom gestures where text or icons were too
small to read or identify.
MWBP 1.0 [CAPABILITIES]
“Exploit device capabilities to provide an enhanced user
experience”
WCAG 2.0 AA Success Criteria 1.4.4 Resize Text:
“text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200
percent without loss of content or functionality”.

11. 2. Issues which require Expert Interpretation
 Interface elements do not receive focus of screen reader:
 MWBP 1.0 [TAB ORDER]:
Create a logical order through links, form controls and
objects.
 WCAG 2.0 AA 2.1.1 Keyboard:
All functionality of the content is operable through a
keyboard interface.

12. 3. Issues which do not Fall Under WCAG 2.0 or
MWBP 1.0
 Several instances reported of icons which users did not
understand the purpose of.
“Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or
rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue
competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes
their relative visibility”
– Nielsen, J.
 No minimum size requirements for text or icons under WCAG
2.0 or MWBP 1.0.

13. Conclusion
 Our results have shown some issues clearly relate to checkpoints in
WCAG 2.0 and MWBP 1.0.
 Our findings show that it common issues do not easily relate to
guidelines may not be considered not reliably testable.
“We also claim that it is not necessary to assess all MWBP guidelines
and that its eligibility for Web content evaluation depends on usage
preferences”
- Carriço, L., Lopez, R. and Bandeira
 In mobile context, users could be the gold standard.

14. Future Work
 Continue collating the issues raised by our testers.
 Monitor and compare severity ratings.
 Categorise and classify accessibility issues according to
disability types; compare to other studies (Carrico et al, 2011).
 Develop Mobile Accessibility principles:
 Design: Text Size; Icon Labelling.
 Interaction: Target Size; Element Spacing
 Structural: [STRUCTURE] Use features of the markup language
to indicate logical document structure.
 Technical: [REDIRECTION] Do not use markup to redirect pages
automatically.

15. Raphael Clegg-Vinell, Chris Bailey, Voula Gkatzidou.
AbilityNet.
Email: chris.bailey@abilitynet.org.uk
raphael.clegg-vinell@abilitynet.org.uk
Twitter: @Raphael_CV; @chrisbailey000; @vouloula
Investigating the Appropriateness and
Relevance of Mobile Web Accessibility
Guidelines