1 Proceedings of the International Conference on Science, Technology, Education, Arts, Management and Social Sciences iSTEAMS Research Nexus 2014, Afe babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Nigeria – May 29-31 st , 2014. EVALUATION OF THE ACCESSIBILITY OF DYNAMIC WEB APPLICATIONS WITH EMPHASIS ON VISUALLY IMPAIRED USERS Kingsley Okoye School of Architecture Computing and Engineering University of East London London, E16 2RD, UK u0926644@uel.ac.uk Hossein Jahankhani School of Architecture Computing and Engineering University of East London London, E16 2RD, UK h.jahankhani@uel.ac.uk Abdel Rahman Tawil School of Architecture Computing and Engineering University of East London London, E16 2RD, UK A.R.Tawil@uel.ac.uk ABSTRACT As the internet is fast migrating from static web pages to dynamic web pages, the users with visual impairment finds its confusing and challenging when accessing the contents on the web. There is evidence that dynamic web applications are confusing and pose accessibility challenges for the visually impaired users. This paper shows that a difference can be made through the basic understanding of the technical requirement of the users with visual impairment and thus propose that only by designing a framework that is structurally flexible, by removing unnecessary extras thereby making every bit useful (fit- for-purpose) for the visually impaired users will such persons be given an increased capacity to intuitively access e-contents. This theory was implemented in a dynamic website for the visually impaired designed in this paper. Designers should be aware of how the screen reading software works to enable them make reasonable adjustments or provide alternative contents that still corresponds to the objective contents to increase the possibility of offering faultless service to users such as the visually impaired. The result of our research reveals that materials can be added to a content repository or re-use of existing ones by identifying the content types and then transform them into a flexible and accessible one that fits the requirements of the visually impaired through our method (no-frill + Agile methodology) rather than computing in advance or designing according to a given specification. This paper also discussed and addressed a number of issues pertinent to the accessibility needs of the visually impaired person as well as means to enhancing their use and access to dynamic web applications. Key words: Dynamic web Application, accessibility, visually impaired users, contents. 1. BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 1.1 Introduction A greater number if not all individuals now use the internet as a means to communicate and to a large extent work and collaborate with each other. However, these innovations in information and communication technology utilisation have paved way for improvement as well as challenges for both the users and the developers. These challenges do not exclude the disabled users. Recently there has been a couple of questions arising as to how best can the use of these fast changing technology be used to intuitively address the needs of the users with disability as well as what is needed in future to better support these users especially the visually impaired users since the internet is fast migrating from static web pages to dynamic web pages; due to the increasing rate at which demand for rich internet application and multimedia content is growing. The software developers has failed to consider what kind of support could be built for such users that do not really want to deal with all the technical details that comes along with the dynamic web applications, focusing only on the increasing demand for rich internet applications. Garrigos et al, 2009 mentions that due to the growing demand for web applications offering a rich user experience, user- centric web applications are being replaced by the so called Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), which provide an interface, interaction and functionality capabilities similar to desktop applications. Rich internet application development has new requirements and concerns that come into play (Wright & Dietrich, 2008), complicating the task of the software developers, impose limited screen size, more difficult interaction and poorer multimedia support. The dynamic web developer’s community is well-aware of these challenging difficulties, because these approaches do not yet cover all design concerns usually encountered in state-of-the-art applications such as the dynamic web.