  Being able to access software in daily life is vital for everyone, and thus
accessibility is a fundamental challenge for software development. However,
given the number of accessibility issues reported by many users, e.g., in app
reviews, it is not clear if accessibility is widely integrated into current
software projects and how software projects address accessibility issues. In
this paper, we report a study of the critical challenges and benefits of
incorporating accessibility into software development and design. We applied a
mixed qualitative and quantitative approach for gathering data from 15
interviews and 365 survey respondents from 26 countries across five continents
to understand how practitioners perceive accessibility development and design
in practice. We got 44 statements grouped into eight topics on accessibility
from practitioners' viewpoints and different software development stages. Our
statistical analysis reveals substantial gaps between groups, e.g.,
practitioners have Direct v.s. Indirect accessibility relevant work experience
when they reviewed the summarized statements. These gaps might hinder the
quality of accessibility development and design, and we use our findings to
establish a set of guidelines to help practitioners be aware of accessibility
challenges and benefit factors. We also propose some remedies to resolve the
gaps and to highlight key future research directions.
