Keyboard navigation mechanisms in widgets: an investigation on ARIA's implementations

Abstract

This study presents an investigation on how keyboard accessibility has been delivered in RIA - Rich Internet Applications. We conducted an evaluation on 32 websites which contained Tab Widgets and 74 websites which contained Menu Widgets, from the 150 websites of Alexa's top most accessed websites list. The evaluation process consisted of checking if the Widgets implemented ARIA - Accessible Rich Internet Applications requirements, like the use of role/state semantic attributes and presentation of keyboard interaction strategies. The results showed that, even though the ARIA specification achieved the status of W3C Candidate Recommendation in 2011 and W3C Recommendation in 2014, few websites implemented Tab and Menu Widgets according to ARIA in the Web. The study also identified alternative keyboard navigation mechanisms that are accessible to Assistive Technologies users, despite the disadvantages they might represent. Moreover, the study proposes a framework to classify these alternative keyboard navigation mechanisms and map the technological requirements which need to be addressed in order to make the Tab and Menu Widgets implement the ARIA specification.