Multilingual website assessment for accessibility

Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference

2016

The number of Internet users has increased tenfold since the beginning of the century up to present, especially thanks to the improvements experienced in web accessibility and the growing number of languages which online content is available in. While translation professionals are making a considerable contribution to that digital information richness, little evidence exists regarding their involvement in the achievement of a more accessible web for all. In this paper, we present the main results of the first empirical study on web accessibility conceived around a translation task. The experiment sought to particularly investigate the quality of image text alternatives produced by French translators with the help of two evaluation tools: aDesigner and Acrolinx. The assessment of their alt text proposals, carried out by seven screen reader users, suggests that using both tools helps translators to create more appropriate text alternatives than when trying to do so with only one tool or without any automated support. A more in-depth analysis of the data gathered shows that Acrolinx offers better guidance than aDesigner for translators to render images accessible.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Measuring the impact of automated evaluation tools on alternative text quality

Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference

2016

“…During this information transfer, web localization professionals are expected to assure that accessibility achievements are maintained across the different website language versions they are working on [6]. This includes, among other tasks, the translation of text alternatives and the creation of new ones, should images be replaced or inserted in the target language website.…”

Section: Research Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unlocking the potential of web localizers as contributors to image accessibility

Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference

2015

Self Cite

Creating appropriate text alternatives to render images accessible in the web is a shared responsibility among all actors involved in the web development cycle, including web localization professionals. However, they often lack the knowledge needed to correctly transfer image accessibility across different website language versions. In this paper, we provide insight into translators' performance as regards their accessibility achievements during text alternatives adaptation from English into French. While our work does not yet return conclusive results, preliminary findings suggest that the combination of both specialized and general web accessibility evaluation tools can help web localizers bridge the knowledge gap and potentially produce text alternatives of higher quality.

“…On one hand, results from an initial survey targeting web accessibility experts suggested that no standardized assessment procedure exist when checking multilingual web accessibility and that little consideration is given to culture-embedded elements and textual content [15]. On the other hand, conclusions drawn from several experimental studies carried out with web localization students and professionals showed that having at least basic knowledge on web accessibility can help localizers maintain the web accessibility level achieved in the source web document, as well as identify and amend potential accessibility problems in the target web product [13,14].…”

Section: Localizing With Accessibility In Mind: a Promising Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Current Accessibility Challenges in the Multilingual Web for Visually-Impaired Users

Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web

2015

The Web is an open network accessed by people across countries, languages and cultures, irrespective of their functional diversity. Over the last two decades, interest about web accessibility issues has significantly increased among web professionals, but people with disabilities still encounter significant difficulties when browsing the Internet. In the particular case of blind users, the use of assistive technologies such as screen readers is key to navigate and interact with web content. Although research efforts made until now have led to a better understanding of visually-impaired users' browsing behavior and, hence, the definition of web design best practices for an improved user experience by this population group, the particularities of websites with multiple language versions have been mostly overlooked. This communication paper seeks to shed light on the major challenges faced by visually-impaired users when accessing the multilingual web, as well as on why and how the web localization community should contribute to a more accessible web for all.