Literature Reviews
Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.
83 results found tagged autism.
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Demonstrating Consent Rings: Explicit Non-Verbal Consent Through Haptic Wearables as a Solution to Unwanted Sex Between Neurodivergent Partners
Consent Rings is a pair of symmetric haptic Bluetooth ring wearables developed by three neurodivergent researchers as an accessibility-oriented alternative to verbal 'yes means yes' affirmative consent. The authors situate the work in evidence that n…
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Understanding Clinician Experiences with Game-Based Interventions for Autistic Children to Inform a Future Game Platform Focused on Improving Motor Skills
This CHI 2026 Extended Abstract reports a two-phase qualitative study with pediatric physical therapists (PTs) and occupational therapists (OTs) to inform the design of AutMotion Studio, a speculative modular platform of motor-skill minigames for aut…
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CollaDrum: Designing a Tangible Interactive Sonic System to Foster Collaboration in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
CollaDrum is a co-designed tangible sonic system intended to scaffold task-based peer collaboration for autistic children in classroom settings, with explicit attention to not adding cognitive overhead from novel interaction paradigms. The authors in…
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Beyond Prompt-Following: Empowering Social Agency in Autistic Children through Narrative Framing
NarraSocial is a Unity-based virtual environment for autistic children aged 6–10 that reframes social-skills interventions away from the prompt-and-response loop characteristic of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and most VR-based social skills traini…
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Sona: Towards Context-Aware, Real-Time Personalization of Acoustic Environments for Noise Sensitivity
Huang and colleagues (University of Michigan and UC Irvine) reframe acoustic accessibility for people with noise sensitivity as selective, user-steerable soundscape mediation rather than wholesale noise cancellation. The authors argue that current co…
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Collaboration and Assistive Technology: Facilitating Joint Awareness for Noise Sensitivity
People with noise sensitivity (PWNS) - including those with misophonia, hyperacusis, and tinnitus, and overlapping strongly with the autistic community (estimated 45% prevalence) - experience everyday sounds as painful, distressing, or overwhelming. …
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Tinged with Heartbreak: An Ethnographic Account of Navigating Autistic Loneliness and the Fragile Promise of AI Companionship
This CHI 2026 paper is a reflexive ethnographic case study (n=1) of 'Andrea', a middle-aged autistic businesswoman in the Western world, and her six-month relationship with Xander, a Replika AI companion she ultimately lost to a corrupting software u…
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Navigating Neurodivergence with AI Chatbots: Benefits, Tensions, and Implications for HCI
This CHI 2026 short paper presents a qualitative interview study of how neurodivergent adults use AI chatbots (primarily ChatGPT) in everyday life, and what tensions arise. The authors conducted 23 semi-structured, 50-minute Zoom interviews with part…
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Lost in Translation: Understanding Autistic-Neurotypical Communication Style Differences in Job Postings
This CHI 2026 paper investigates a concrete and consequential site of autistic-neurotypical (NT) communication mismatch: the written job posting. Autistic adults face an approximately 85% unemployment or underemployment rate (compared to 4% in the ge…
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Autistic Adults' Perspectives on Self-Expression and Dyadic vs. Group Interactions in AR Telepresence
This CHI 2026 paper investigates how autistic adults experience augmented reality (AR) telepresence as a medium for social interaction, a population whose needs are largely absent from existing avatar and social VR/AR research. Motivated by the high …