Exploring Variability of Visual Accessibility Options in Operating Systems

Austin Waffo Kouhoué,Marianne Huchard,Thomas Bouétou Bouétou,Yoann Bonavero

doi:10.3390/fi13090230

Abstract

Digital technologies are an opportunity to overcome disabilities, provided that accessibility is ensured. In this paper, we focus on visual accessibility and the way it is supported in Operating Systems (OS). The significant variability in this support has practical consequences, e.g., the difficulty to recommend or select an OS, or migrate from one OS to another. This suggests building a variability model for OS that would classify them and would serve as a reference. We propose a methodology to build such a variability model with the help of the Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) framework. In addition, as visual accessibility can be divided into several concerns (e.g., zoom, or contrast), we leverage an extension of FCA, namely Relational Concept Analysis. We also build an ontology to dispose of a standardized description of visual accessibility options. We apply our proposal to the analysis of the variability of a few representative operating systems.

Highlights

Accessibility Options in OperatingDigital technologies provide many opportunities, including overcoming a disability and simplifying access to knowledge and services [1,2,3]
We focus on visual accessibility in operating systems (OS)
The approach we propose is based on Formal Concept Analysis (FCA, [17])

Summary

Introduction

Digital technologies provide many opportunities, including overcoming a disability and simplifying access to knowledge and services [1,2,3]. E.g., the Americans with Disabilities Act (https://adata.org/topic/technology-accessible, accessed on 1 September 2021), promote full participation of individuals to all areas of the society and reduction of discriminations, including the digital sector [4]. Vision is the focal point of the recent studies in software accessibility [5]. There is no unique reference for software accessibility [5,11] and OS manufacturers make various interpretations of the existing international recommendations [4].

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Conclusion