Literature Reviews

Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.

• AXECC: Benchmarking the Privacy and Accessibility Impact of Browser Extensions

  James Clarke, Maryam Mehrnezhad, Ehsan Toreini (2026) — ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security

  This paper presents AXECC, a novel automated framework for jointly measuring the web-tracking behaviour and accessibility impact of browser extensions at scale. The authors argue that while browser extensions are widely installed to improve the brows…

  • browser extensions
  • web tracking
  • privacy
  • accessibility testing
  • automated testing
  • WCAG
  • WAVE
  • Lighthouse
  • dark mode
  • screen readers
  • assistive technology

• Proposing New Metrics to Evaluate Web Usability for the Blind

  Kentarou Fukuda, Shin Saito, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa (2005) — CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  This four-page CHI '05 extended abstract argues that existing automated accessibility checkers — in 2005 typified by Bobby — had plateaued: they verified the presence of ALT attributes, labels, and markup conformance, yet real blind users still found…

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility evaluation
  • accessibility metrics
  • screen readers
  • voice browser
  • blindness and low vision
  • automated accessibility
  • alt text
  • accessibility testing

• SAMBA: a semi-automatic method for measuring barriers of accessibility

  Giorgio Brajnik, Raffaella Lomuscio (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  Brajnik and Lomuscio argue that web accessibility cannot be managed without being measured, yet existing accessibility metrics are underdeveloped and almost universally tied to conformance with WCAG checkpoints rather than to the real-world barriers …

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility metrics
  • accessibility evaluation
  • accessibility testing
  • conformance testing
  • barrier walkthrough
  • expert review
  • automated testing
  • quality assurance

• Accessibility Designer: Visualizing Usability for the Blind

  Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa, Kentarou Fukuda, Junji Maeda (2003) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '04)

  This paper from IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory presents Accessibility Designer (aDesigner), a tool that goes beyond conventional accessibility checkers by visualising the usability of web pages for blind screen reader users rather than merely checki…

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility testing
  • screen reader
  • blindness and low vision
  • accessibility tools
  • usability
  • automated testing
  • skip navigation
  • alt text
  • heading hierarchy
  • accessibility evaluation

• Programming for Usability in Nonvisual User Interfaces

  Gerhard Weber (1998) — Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This short paper from Harz University addresses a fundamental problem in accessible software development: sighted developers working in visual programming environments must create interfaces that are usable nonvisually, but standard software engineer…

  • accessibility API
  • screen readers
  • software engineering
  • nonvisual interface
  • usability
  • accessibility testing
  • MSAA

• A Study of Input Device Manipulation Difficulties

  Shari Trewin (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper from the University of Edinburgh describes a pilot study designed to gather detailed, quantified data about physical input errors made by people with motor disabilities when using standard keyboards and mice. The author identifies a signif…

  • motor disability
  • keyboard accessibility
  • mouse accessibility
  • input errors
  • performance errors
  • input logging
  • assistive technology
  • user research
  • accessibility testing
  • personalization

• A comparative test of web accessibility evaluation methods

  Giorgio Brajnik (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a controlled laboratory experiment comparing two web accessibility evaluation methods: conformance review (CR) and barrier walkthrough (BW). Conformance review is the traditional approach where evaluators check whether a page sati…

  • accessibility evaluation
  • conformance testing
  • barrier walkthrough
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG
  • evaluation methods
  • accessibility testing
  • quality assessment

• How Much Does Expertise Matter? A Barrier Walkthrough Study with Experts and Non-Experts

  Yeliz Yesilada, Giorgio Brajnik, Simon Harper (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper investigates whether expertise matters in manual web accessibility evaluation by comparing results from 19 expert and 51 non-expert judges using the Barrier Walkthrough (BW) method. The BW method is an analytical technique based on heurist…

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility evaluation
  • barrier walkthrough
  • WCAG
  • evaluator effect
  • expertise
  • accessibility testing
  • research methodology

• Accessibility by Demonstration: Enabling End Users to Guide Developers to Web Accessibility Solutions

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Jeremy T. Brudvik, Bernie Zhang (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper introduces Accessibility by Demonstration (ABD), a novel approach to accessibility evaluation that lets assistive technology users record the accessibility problems they encounter as shareable, replayable demonstrations and send them direc…

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility testing
  • screen readers
  • blind and low vision
  • accessibility evaluation
  • developer tools
  • user research

• Towards Automated Accessibility Report Generation for Mobile Apps

  Amanda Swearngin, Jason Wu, Xiaoyi Zhang, Esteban Gomez, Jen Coughenour, Rachel Stukenborg, Bhavya Garg, Greg Hughes, Adriana Hilliard, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Jeffrey Nichols (2024) — ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

  This paper presents a system for automatically generating whole-app accessibility reports for mobile apps, addressing key limitations of existing accessibility scanning tools. The work begins with formative interviews with eight accessibility QA prof…

  • automated testing
  • accessibility testing
  • mobile accessibility
  • app crawling
  • machine learning
  • computer vision
  • quality assurance
  • accessibility metadata
  • screen readers