Abstract
Relevant literature focusing on the accessibility of electronic documents (e.g., PDFs) has been increasing in recent years. Despite its significance, paradoxically, scientific articles, even those related to accessibility-themed topics, often fail to provide fully accessible content, thus creating a gap between theory and practice. Therefore, we aimed to explore how PDF versions of academic articles on digital accessibility evaluation, published in the past ten years, comply with established accessibility standards. We performed a tool-based evaluation using Adobe Accessibility Checker and a manual evaluation to inspect the articles comprehensively. The results showed that none of the analyzed articles were problem-free. They, however, contained recurring, severe accessibility barriers, making it highly challenging for people who rely on screen readers to access information. Also, the evaluated data showed no discernible pattern of changes over the years.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Acosta-Vargas, P., Luján-Mora, S., Acosta, T.: Accessibility of portable document format in education repositories. In: 9th International Conference on Education Technology and Computers, pp. 239–242 (2017)
Adobe Acrobat XI Pro Accessibility Guide: Best Practices for PDF Accessibility. https://acrobatusers.com/assets/uploads/public_downloads/2190/acrobat-xi-pro-accessibility-best-practice-guide.pdf. Accessed 28 Mar 2024
Antonelli, H.L., Rodrigues, S.S., Watanabe, W.M., de Mattos Fortes, R.P.: A survey on accessibility awareness of Brazilian web developers. In: 8th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion, pp. 71–79 (2018)
Bigham, J.P., Brady, E.L., Gleason, C., Guo, A., Shamma, D.A.: An uninteresting tour through why our research papers aren’t accessible. In: CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 621–631 (2016)
Brady, E., Zhong, Y., Bigham, J.P.: Creating accessible PDFs for conference proceedings. In: 12th International Web for All Conference, pp. 1–4 (2015)
Darvishy, A.: PDF accessibility: tools and challenges. In: Miesenberger, K., Kouroupetroglou, G. (eds.) ICCHP 2018. LNCS, vol. 10896, pp. 113–116. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94277-3_20
Devine, H., Gonzalez, A., Hardy, M.: Making accessible PDF documents. In: 11th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering, pp. 275–276 (2011)
Doblies, L., Stolz, D., Darvishy, A., Hutter, H.-P.: PAVE: a Web application to identify and correct accessibility problems in PDF documents. In: Miesenberger, K., Fels, D., Archambault, D., Peňáz, P., Zagler, W. (eds.) Computers Hel** People with Special Needs, pp. 185–192. Springer, Cham (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08596-8_29
Domínguez Vila, T., Alén González, E., Darcy, S.: Accessibility of tourism websites: the level of countries’ commitment. Univ. Access Inf. Soc. 19(2), 331–346 (2020)
Drümmer, O., Erle, M.: PDF/UA – a new era for document accessibility: understanding, managing and implementing the ISO standard PDF/UA (universal accessibility): introduction to the special thematic session. In: Miesenberger, K., Karshmer, A., Penaz, P., Zagler, W. (eds.) ICCHP 2012. LNCS, vol. 7382, pp. 585–586. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31522-0_88
Inal, Y.: I feel for you! The effect of empathy exercises on accessibility awareness. Universal Access in the Information Society (2024)
Inal, Y., Guribye, F., Rajanen, D., Rajanen, M., Rost, M.: Perspectives and practices of digital accessibility: a survey of user experience professionals in Nordic countries. In: 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Sha** Experiences, Sha** Society, pp. 1–11 (2020)
Inal, Y., Mishra, D., Torkildsby, A.B.: An analysis of web content accessibility of municipality websites for people with disabilities in Norway: Web accessibility of Norwegian municipality websites. In: Nordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference, pp. 1–12 (2022)
Inal, Y., Torkildsby, A.B.: Web accessibility in Higher Education in Norway: to what extent are university websites accessible? In: Nocera, J.A., Lárusdóttir, M.K., Petrie, H., Piccinno, A., Winckler, M. (eds.) INTERACT 2023, pp. 111–122. Springer, Cham (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42280-5_7
Ismailova, R., Inal, Y.: Comparison of online accessibility evaluation tools: an analysis of tool effectiveness. IEEE Access 10, 58233–58239 (2022)
Nganji, J.T.: The Portable Document Format (PDF) accessibility practice of four journal publishers. Libr. Inf. Sci. Res. 37(3), 254–262 (2015)
Nganji, J.T.: An assessment of the accessibility of PDF versions of selected journal articles published in a WCAG 2.0 era (2014–2018). Learned Publishing 31(4), 391–401 (2018)
Pradhan, D., et al.: Development and evaluation of a tool for assisting content creators in making PDF files more accessible. ACM Trans. Accessible Comput. 15(1), 1–52 (2022)
Ribera, M., Pozzobon, R., Sayago, S.: Publishing accessible proceedings: the DSAI 2016 case study. Univ. Access Inf. Soc. 19(3), 557–569 (2020)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Ethics declarations
The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Szentirmai, A.B., Inal, Y., Torkildsby, A.B. (2024). The Accessibility Paradox: Can Research Articles Inspecting Accessibility Be Inaccessible?. In: Miesenberger, K., Peňáz, P., Kobayashi, M. (eds) Computers Hel** People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14750. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-62846-7_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-62846-7_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-62845-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-62846-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)