Auditor: a webpage accessibility validator for people with autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

During the last years some standards have been established in order to make the Web accessible for anyone. Following these guidelines, different webpages validators have been developed, to help Web programmers and users understanding if a page is accessible by people with disabilities. Many disabilities have been considered, e.g., auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech, and visual disabilities, and we can find many validators around the Web, but there is no specific validator for people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The problem of ASD is that it involves different types of difficulties, e.g., in text and images understanding, as well as problems looking at animated objects or listening to specific sounds, etc., it is thus difficult to develop a general validator. Presently, there are many theoretical guidelines for the development of websites for people with ASD, but no specific validator exists. Following the existing guidelines we have developed a validator which can be used by users to understand if a page is accessible for people with ASD. Moreover, it indicates to website developers which are the critical issues that make the website non-accessible.