Articles
Original articles on digital accessibility, research, and practice.
3 results found tagged co-design.
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Robots and Disability: What 36 Accessibility Studies Tell Us
A survey of 36 peer-reviewed accessibility research papers on robotics and disability — spanning the full CaBot / AI Suitcase navigation programme from Chieko Asakawa and colleagues, physical collaboration for blind users, gaze-controlled manipulation, feeding robots, telepresence in classrooms and museums, socially assistive robots (SARs) for older adults, adults with intellectual disabilities, AAC users, and perinatal depression screening, neurodivergent design with robot dogs and swarm robots, BMI-controlled performance, dynamic tactile graphics, a tabletop humanoid that teaches posture to blind learners, and Jang et al.'s theoretical reframing from autonomy to relational sovereignty.
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The Right to Shape Sound: How Accessibility Research Is Rethinking Music Composition and Performance
Music is an inherently aural art form — so why is music technology so deeply inaccessible? This article examines 29 peer-reviewed papers on making music composition and performance accessible, from the bleak software landscape facing blind producers to vibrotactile alternatives that free the audio channel, text-based composition tools, brain-controlled robotic performance arms, Deaf sonic agency, and the consistent finding that community-designed music technology outperforms external design.
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Beyond Speech: What Research Reveals About Augmentative, Alternative, and Accessible Communication
AAC research is moving past the speech-generating device toward a richer understanding of how communication actually works. This article examines 81 papers spanning AAC devices, sign language technology, speech recognition for atypical speech, captioning, and aphasia — revealing that 92.3% of high-tech AAC supports only verbal communication, 67% of devices are abandoned because vocabulary does not match daily life, and the most valued communication tools augment rather than replace users existing strategies.