Characterizing Real-World Accessibility Issues Reported in Kotlin Mobile Apps
Although accessibility guidelines and automated checks are widely available, mobile applications continue to present barriers that exclude users with disabilities. Prior work has emphasized guideline conformance and static analysis, but little is known about how accessibility problems actually arise during the development process. This work analyzes real accessibility issues reported by developers in open-source mobile projects. A manual review of 256 GitHub issues related to accessibility (in Kotlin native Android applications), combined with thematic analysis, yields an empirically grounded taxonomy of problems not deeply considered before. The taxonomy captures recurring issues in assistive technology support, visual accessibility, and touch and gesture interaction. Our findings indicate that many accessibility issues are not due to the absence of elements, but rather to incorrect or missing semantics that impede assistive technologies. These findings provide a basis for improving accessibility rules used by existing static and dynamic analysis tools, as well as developer practices and future research efforts.
Wed 8 JulDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
16:00 - 17:00 | Mobile Apps 2Research Papers / Ideas, Visions and Reflections / Industry Papers / Tool Demonstrations at MB 3.210 Chair(s): Jingling Sun University of Electronic Science and Technology of China | ||
16:00 20mTalk | GUIMigrator: Semantics-Preserving Transpilation from Android XML to Compose and SwiftUI Research Papers Yi Gao Zhejiang University, Xing Hu Zhejiang University, Xiaohu Yang Zhejiang University, Xin Xia Zhejiang University Pre-print | ||
16:20 10mTalk | Kea2: Practical Property-based Testing for Mobile Apps Tool Demonstrations Xixian Liang East China Normal University, Cheng Peng East China Normal University, Bo Ma East China Normal University, Xiangchen Shen East China Normal University, Yiheng Xiong Singapore Management University, Ting Su East China Normal University | ||
16:30 20mTalk | What You See Is Not What You Tap: Detecting Misalignments between Visual and Interactive Boundaries in Mobile Apps Industry Papers Qingyang Qiu College of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Fudan University, Xuan Wang Fudan University, Jintao Wang College of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Fudan University, Yongxiang Hu Fudan University, Hailiang Jin Meituan Inc., Xingjian Yang College of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Fudan University, Yao Xu College of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Fudan University, Shiyu Guo Meituan Inc., Juxing Yuan Meituan Inc., Yangfan Zhou Fudan University | ||
16:50 10mTalk | Characterizing Real-World Accessibility Issues Reported in Kotlin Mobile Apps Ideas, Visions and Reflections Benjamín Enrique González-Briones Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Juan Pablo Sandoval Alcocer Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Alison Fernandez-Blanco Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Leonel Merino Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Camilo Escobar-Velásquez Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, Mario Linares-Vásquez Universidad de los Andes | ||