Abstract: Background:Accessibility evaluation of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) is a field of ongoing research. Towards an evaluation framework for automatic accessibility assessment, a novel methodology using Virtual User Models (VUMs) is presented. Objective:To establish a new framework for GUI accessibility assessment using an automated hierarchical task analysis method which uses virtual user models for cognitive disability to replicate real testers. Methods:A two-phase process which involves the creation of custom GUI interaction scenario sequences in an implementation-agnostic manner and then the simulated reproduction of these interactions by virtual impaired users. Emphasis is given on the cognitive disabilities, after the development of an advanced cognitive model to be applied over well-established VUM architectures. Results:The results of the actual testers were found correlated to the results extracted from the VUMs performing the same tasks. Conclusions:The proposed approach is a holistic accessibility assessment of GUIs using Virtual User Models (VUM) in task simulations which can describe cognitive declined functionality as parameterized by VUM.
Keywords: GUI simulation, cognition simulation, accessibility assessment, evaluation, user experience, virtual user model
