Automatic Role Detection of Visual Elements of Web Pages for Automatic Accessibility Evaluation

Understanding what role a visual element plays in a web page can have a significant impact in the accessibility of that page. From an accessibility conformance testing perspective, several WCAG techniques require role identification of some visual elements during the testing process. This has prevented automatic accessibility evaluation tools from processing these techniques. A technique for automatic role detection of visual elements of web pages was recently developed as a complement to a web page segmentation process. This paper explores this role identification technique in the context of automatic web accessibility evaluation. The technique is integrated with an automated evaluation tool, and demonstrated to successfully evaluate some WCAG techniques that rely on the identification of visual elements, in particular menu and list elements.