Silver Research Project

The Silver Accessibility Guidelines project was designed to be research-based. The Silver Task Force of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group and the Silver Community Group collaborated with researchers on questions that the Silver Group identified.

Here are links to the documents used to plan the Research phase of the Silver work:

Research Summary - an external slide deck.
Research Questions
Research Projects (information for researchers)
Past Research Projects (archive)
Original Research Timeline (archive)
Literature Review (archive)
Interview Project (archive)

Research Results

WCAG Use by UX Professionals This survey project was conducted by Peter McNally of Bentley University. He intends to publish his own findings. Prior to that, he shared his raw data with us for our analysis. This link points to the analysis report by members of Silver Community Group.
WCAG Success Criteria Usability Study - survey conducted by David Sloan and Sarah Horton of The Paciello Group. It evaluates the usability of WCAG 2.0 by asking people who are familiar with WCAG 2 to rate Level A and AA Success Criteria of WCAG 2 by learn-ability, memorability and teach-ability.
WCAG Conformance Survey - Key findings of a survey on WCAG Conformance. The primary goal was to determine how effective the structure of WCAG – particularly, conformance – helps meet needs of both people with disabilities and people that use the guidelines.
| Internet of Things (IoT) Education: Implications for Students with Disabilities - This research was conducted by Scott Hollier and others at Curtin University in Australia.
Interviews on Conformance - This research project interviewed stakeholders in WCAG to attempt to address balancing the difficult-to-test needs of people with disabilities with the desire to provide accessibility regulatory guidance.
Legacy Interviews - This project interviewed people involved in the original drafts of WCAG 2.0. The report is not complete.
Web Accessibility Perceptions Student project from Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Supervised and approved by Eleanor Loiacono, PhD (Professor in Information Technology)
Reimagining Accessibility Guidelines Feedback Three presentations on Silver were held during the fall of 2017 where 4 questions were asked of the audience. Their answers provide insight into perceptions of WCAG 2.0 from technical professionals and accessibility professionals.
Robert Gordon University Computer Science project. Prof. Mike Crabb assigned his students a project to select a Silver research question and write a paper on it. He shared the grade "A" papers with us. While we did not use these papers in drawing conclusions for Silver (because the sample size is too small), they are interesting reading. The papers are in PDF format.