13 providing an ide for creating, simulating and assessing accessible applications

AEGIS Workshop and International Conference, Brussels

Providing an IDE for creating, simulating and assessing accessible applications


Overview

• Introduction

• State of art analysis

• Methodology

• Case study: Building an accessible web application

• Conclusions


Paper objectives

• To provide the required knowledge on relevant IDEs that will influence the design and specifications of the envisioned tool based on best practices and current implementations and reusing software components or systems if necessary, available as open source products.

• To present the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which allows the creation, simulation and assessment of accessible Web applications.


State of art

• To fulfill the first objective, we reviewed the most representative development platforms for building accessible Web applications and concluded that there is no such available platform guiding developers through the whole procedure:

– IBM rational application developer for WebSphere software

• What can be seen as a drawback about this IDE is that it is a commercial one.

– Ajax tools framework project home

• The downside of this approach is that it relies almost entirely on AJAX.

– CodeLobster PHP edition

• Developers have to buy low-cost plugins for it to add additional library and framework functionality (such as auto-complete, syntax-highlighting, command help, and other plugin-specific features). In addition CodeLobster is too slow to open big projects and it’s hard to find a file in the file list.

– Dojo IDE


Methodology

• Development and installation of several NetBeans plug-ins that help with the development, simulation and assessment of web-based applications:

– A palette with WAI-ARIA enabled widgets from jQuery, MooTools, and Fluid Infusion libraries such as datepicker, button, etc. as plug-in in NetBeans platform (version 7.0.1).

– DIAS for simulation as plug-in in NetBeans platform.

– WaaT for assessment as plug-in in NetBeans platform.


Building an accessible web-based app

• Development phase of application:

– HTML code

– Several WAI-ARIA enabled web components are dragged and dropped from NetBeans component palette

– Finalization of the application's code

• Preview of the application:

Via the embedded html browser using DJ Native Swing Library


Building an accessible web-based app

• Simulation phase of the application:

– Using the ACCESSIBLE DIAS (Disability Impairment Approximation Simulator) functionality that has been already installed into NetBeans as plug-in.

• Assessment phase of application using:

– the ACCESSIBLE WaaT (Web accessibility assessment tool)

– and a specific user/persona

• Results of the assessment:

– Pdf or earl (xml) report


WaaT assessment results


Conclusions

• This IDE accelerates Web development:

– it hides complexity from novice users

– it eliminates many tedious tasks for more experienced developers

• This IDE could also serve as a demonstration of WAI-ARIA enabled widgets and generally for Web programming techniques, practices and architectures.

• We have used the IDE in a testing environment for debugging purposes, but a greater scale evaluation has not been done yet.

– We plan such an evaluation will be made possible in the near future, when a private alpha of the system will be held providing us with valuable feedback from developers.

– In general, the tool did meet our expectations providing a usable IDE for developing accessible Web applications.

13 providing an ide for creating, simulating and assessing accessible applications

Technology