Understanding developer challenges and trends in web accessibility: a stack overflow analysis

Many standards and guidelines are available to promote the accessibility of digital products and services, yet developers may still struggle to comprehend how they can be applied. In this study, we investigate Stack Overflow posts in order to comprehend the challenges developers confront in the context of web accessibility. Our analysis involved manually labeling 5,092 posts associated with web accessibility to ensure the credibility and consistency of our results. In addition, a formal open-coding approach was employed to generate a taxonomy that delineates the various aspects developers discuss concerning accessibility in web applications. Our analysis revealed that accessibility posts had increased significantly through the years and that approximately 18.36% of the accessibility issues were associated with screen reader behavior. Our study also indicates that most discussions are a call to assistance to improve their application accessibility for visual impairments. The analysis of developers’ queries on Stack Overflow reveals several distinct trends. These findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges that developers face when it comes to web accessibility.