A Data Model to Facilitate the Automation of Web Accessibility Evaluations

Describing test results in a standardized format facilitates the exchange of information between different types of tools that are used to evaluate Web sites for accessibility. The Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) is a machine-readable, platform-independent, and vendor-neutral format that builds on Semantic Web technologies to provide a powerful data model for expressing test results. While the primary motivation for developing this language is to facilitate the automation of Web accessibility evaluations, it is has been designed so that it can serve generic Web quality assurance purposes as well as other use cases outside the scope of Web site evaluation.