InterA11y: Interactive Web Accessibility Error Detection with LLM Agents

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown potential to expand the coverage of web accessibility evaluation. However, current LLM-based checkers neglect much of the interactive and dynamic web contexts, resulting in limited coverage, high false discovery rates, and inconsistent performance across models. We present InterA11y, an agentic accessibility evaluation system that combines rubrics and interactive tools to support LLM agents in evaluating accessibility effectively. The rubrics decompose WCAG success criteria (SC) into testable aspects and guide agents in collecting and interpreting evidence. The interactive tools inspect or operate a webpage deterministically to collect evidence, such as focus appearances and error messages. We developed these rubrics and tools on 682 curated test cases grounded in established accessibility guidelines that target 10 commonly violated SC. We evaluated InterA11y on 197 expert-annotated cases sampled from 54 real webpages. Results show InterA11y achieves higher recall than the strongest evaluated LLM-driven baseline (79.0% vs. 44.4%), while maintaining comparable precision to best rule-based checkers (93.1% vs. 90.3-97.6%), with little variability between models. Further, when equipped with our interactive tools, general-purpose web agents detect more accessibility errors with fewer false positives and less token usage than without these tools.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
arXiv (Cornell University)
Published
2026-10-29
DOI
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2610.39488
Primary Topic
Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
Type
preprint
Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
preprint

InterA11y: Interactive Web Accessibility Error Detection with LLM Agents

Mingyuan Zhong, Jacob Otto Wobbrock, James Fogarty, Davin Win Kyi et al.
arXiv (Cornell University)
Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
preprint

InterA11y: Interactive Web Accessibility Error Detection with LLM Agents

Mingyuan Zhong, Jacob Otto Wobbrock, James Fogarty, Davin Win Kyi, Ajit Mallavarapu, Xia Chen, Mengqi Shi
preprint en

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown potential to expand the coverage of web accessibility evaluation. However, current LLM-based checkers neglect much of the interactive and dynamic web contexts, resulting in limited coverage, high false discovery rates, and inconsistent performance across models. We present InterA11y, an agentic accessibility evaluation system that combines rubrics and interactive tools to support LLM agents in evaluating accessibility effectively. The rubrics decompose WCAG success criteria (SC) into testable aspects and guide agents in collecting and interpreting evidence. The interactive tools inspect or operate a webpage deterministically to collect evidence, such as focus appearances and error messages. We developed these rubrics and tools on 682 curated test cases grounded in established accessibility guidelines that target 10 commonly violated SC. We evaluated InterA11y on 197 expert-annotated cases sampled from 54 real webpages. Results show InterA11y achieves higher recall than the strongest evaluated LLM-driven baseline (79.0% vs. 44.4%), while maintaining comparable precision to best rule-based checkers (93.1% vs. 90.3-97.6%), with little variability between models. Further, when equipped with our interactive tools, general-purpose web agents detect more accessibility errors with fewer false positives and less token usage than without these tools.

arXiv (Cornell University)
Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.

Laika access coming soon