A Historical Review of Web Accessibility Using WAVE
Open accessAbstract
In today's fast-evolving technology, the Internet has become an integral part of our everyday lives. However, for people with disabilities, accessing the online world and navigating through it can be a challenging task. Accessibility on the web ensures that the online world can be used by people with disabilities which is convenient and not complicated to use. The purpose of this study is to offer a thorough knowledge of how web accessibility has changed and evolved over the past ten years. In this historical review, leveraging website archives, patterns and insights in web accessibility over time has been researched. The study collected data on web accessibility violations between January 2013 and April 2023 from 40 homepages of websites across four popular website categories (social network, entertainment, e-commerce, and news media) in the United States using the WAVE subscription API. The data was then further analyzed and insights were found, such as the most common web accessibility issues, the best year for the web accessibility, and the effect of the website category on the levels of web accessibility issues. The study aims to provide insights on the current condition of web accessibility and identify areas that still require development.
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WAVE and aXe were selected because they are widely used in accessibility research and integrated into A11yAgent's internal evaluation pipeline, ensuring consistent measurement across all conditions.
“These tools were selected because they are widely used in accessibility research [15, 17, 19, 21] and are integrated into A11yAgent's internal evaluation pipeline, ensuring consistent measurement across all conditions.”
From A Multi-Agent Framework for Accessible Web Code Generation (2026) · cites this paper as [17]
Section 2.3 describes WAVE as a popular automated accessibility checker, and Section 3.3.1 uses it in the paper’s accessibility research. The cited paper does not establish that aXe is widely used; the statement about A11yAgent’s internal pipeline appears after the citations and is not attributed to this source. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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Cites
A longitudinal evaluation of accessibility: higher education web sites
Hackett, S., & Parmanto, B. (2005) · Internet Research · doi:10.1108/10662240510602690 · Cited by 124 · see citing works
Accessibility of Indian universities’ homepages: An exploratory study
Ismail, A., & Kuppusamy, K. S. (2018) · Journal of King Saud University - Computer and Information Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.jksuci.2016.06.006 · Cited by 114 · cited 1× · see citing works
“The studies have evaluated the accessibility problem and identified the various causes of inaccessible content on the web [17] [21] [19] .”
BackgroundAbuaddous, H. Y., Zalisham, M., & Basir, N. (2016) · International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications · doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2016.071023 · Cited by 87 · see citing works
A retrospective look at website accessibility over time
Hackett, S., Parmanto, B., & Zeng, X. (2005) · Behaviour and Information Technology · doi:10.1080/01449290500066661 · Cited by 75 · see citing works
Evaluation of the web accessibility of higher-education websites
Acosta-Vargas, P., Luján‐Mora, S., & Salvador-Ullauri, L. (2016) · International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET) · doi:10.1109/ithet.2016.7760703 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Akram, M. I., & Bt, R. (2017) · International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications · doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2017.080642 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
E-Commerce Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities
Sohaib, O., & Kang, K. (2017) · Lecture notes in information systems and organisation · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-52593-8_6 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
Evaluating Accessibility and Usability of Airline Websites
Agrawal, G., Kumar, D., Singh, M., & Dani, D. (2019) · Communications in computer and information science · doi:10.1007/978-981-13-9939-8_35 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
Lazar, J. K. (2022) · Including Disability · doi:10.51357/id.vi2.197 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
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LLMs for Accessibility in Mobile Apps: Detection and Repair
Aljedaani, W., Aljohani, A., Eler, M. M., Habib, A., & Do, H. (2025) · International Web for All Conference (W4A) · doi:10.1145/3744257.3744270 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Generative AI in Heritage Practice: Improving the Accessibility of Heritage Guidance
Witte, J., Lee, E., Brausem, L., Shillabeer, V., & Bonacchi, C. (2025) · Heritage · doi:10.3390/heritage8120513 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Leporini, B., Buzzi, M., & Penna, G. D. (2025) · International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) · doi:10.1145/3733155.3737910 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
A Multi-Agent Framework for Accessible Web Code Generation
Aljedaani, W., Shaik, M. A., & Aljohani, A. (2026) · Proceedings of the 23rd International Web for All Conference · doi:10.1145/3800424.3800453 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
An Empirical Investigation on the Diffuseness of Accessibility Issues in Public Web Applications
Chouchane, M., Elghali, S., Okezie, C., Soui, M., & Kessentini, M. (2026) · International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1080/10447318.2026.2640458
The Long Road to Web Accessibility: Three Decades of Retrospective Analysis
Afroz, M., Dar, M. D., & Chowdhury, O. (2026) · ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) · doi:10.1145/3777912.3839806
From Reports to Resolutions: Accessibility in Practice Through Moodle’s Issue Tracker
He, Z., Huq, S. F., He, Y., Dam, H. K., & Malek, S. (2026) · International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS) · doi:10.1145/3797867.3829062
Self-citation
- Authors
- Bhatia, P. N., & Malek, S.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE Workshop on Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2024-04-20
- Pages
- 55-62
- OpenAlex
- W4402596359
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 3
- FWCI
- 3.82
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (2211790, 2106306)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Keywords
- web accessibility, WAVE tool, accessibility violations, people with disabilities, social networks, e-commerce, news media
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