A First Look at Accessibility Issues in Popular GitHub Projects

Accessibility design elements allow people to access software products and services independent of their different abilities. However, accessibility is challenging to handle and whether accessibility is widely considered in software projects is unclear. In this work, we aim to understand if accessibility is a prevalent consideration in practice, what accessibility issues are discussed in GitHub projects, what potential reasons cause accessibility issues, and what solutions (e.g., tools and standards) are applied for addressing accessibility issues. In this work, we collect 11,820 accessibility issues and their threads discussed by developers in popular GitHub projects. We manually analyzed and grouped the collected accessibility issues into seven categories. The results of our study uncover that accessibility is widely discussed in general projects, and the potential reasons that cause accessibility issues are because developers are not aware of the importance of accessibility and they lack knowledge about accessibility concerns, standards, and existing tools. Our results and findings can enhance and improve developers' knowledge and awareness when they conduct accessibility-relevant design or incorporate accessibility elements into their projects.