A model-driven development for creating accessible web menus

Web pages are composed by several elements that allow users to interact with available content. Some of these elements, such as menus, are responsible for assisting the navigation in the website, helping in the localization and access of the information requested by the user. However, many of menus available in Internet are not developed in an accessible manner, which creates accessibility barriers for many users, especially users with disabilities. Non-accessible menus hinder users find the information that they are looking for and therefore they can give up accessing the web site. This paper aims at addressing the problem by helping developers to create accessible web menus based on model-driven approach. Adopting this approach can help developers build accessible menus without knowing the technical details about accessibility. In direction to this objective, we initially studied the different types of menus and their structures, as well as the accessibility guidelines that involve creating accessible menus. From the study, we developed a meta-model that originated the DSL (Domain Specific Language) called AMenu (Accessible Menu). Then we included all the technical details about accessibility in the transformations. Finally, we presented an exploratory evaluation of DSL, discussing their efficiency and limitations. The results indicate a reduction in efforts for developing accessible web menus, since developers do not have to deal with technical details of accessibility. Our approach provides an alternative to traditional approaches to development for creating accessible web menus. The principles used in this study can be included in CASE tools and IDEs with great acceptance in the industry and therefore facilitate and disseminate the development of accessible systems. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.