A Conceptual Model For Web Accessibility Requirements In Agile Development

Abstract

Accessibility is the practice of making content and functionality accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities. Although accessibility is a highly relevant quality attribute, it is often treated as an afterthought in software development, unfortunately excluding people with disabilities from using many web-based systems. Specifically in agile development, sprints focus on new features and quality attributes, such as accessibility, are often not considered sufficiently. In these cases, using conceptual models to understand and analyze requirements that developers have formulated as a set of related user stories is a research opportunity. To increase agile professionals' focus on accessibility, we built a conceptual model for web accessibility, identifying artifacts and concepts used in agile development to specify accessibility. We discuss how this model can be used as a guide to better integrate accessibility considerations into agile software development. Researchers can use the result to define resources that are not currently covered or improve underutilized practices. We plan to use the conceptual model in the next steps to adapt existing agile artifacts and create support tools for web accessibility in agile development.