Studying Industry Practices of Accessibility Requirements in Agile Development

Although many companies are aware of the need to deliver systems accessible to all, many websites and web applications present accessibility limitations, making it impossible for some people to use. This may be also observed when those applications are developed in an agile context. We are interested in studying how agile teams address accessibility. In this paper, we conducted an online survey with 13 companies that apply agile development. The main objective was to understand how these companies deal with accessibility requirements in their web projects and what methods, tools, or techniques are used to help agile teams in this process. Our empirical results revealed that most participants only have basic knowledge of web accessibility and are unfamiliar with accessibility guidelines and assistive technologies. Acceptance criteria are the artifact more used to specify these requirements. Also, the survey reveals that accessibility is not a priority item by the companies, and no specific methods or tools assist teams in this process. In general, respondents reported that lack of training and the unexpressed need imposed by customers are the main reasons for not prioritizing these requirements in their projects.