Literature Reviews

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

• Lost in Instructions: Study of Blind Users' Experiences with DIY Manuals and AI-Rewritten Instructions for Assembly, Operation, and Troubleshooting of Tangible Products

  Monalika Padma Reddy, Aruna Balasubramanian, Jiawei Zhou, Xiaojun Bi, IV Ramakrishnan, Vikas Ashok (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Blind users increasingly reach for AI tools like Be My AI (Be My Eyes' GPT-4-powered assistant) and ChatGPT to interpret the printed and PDF product manuals that accompany consumer goods - flat-pack furniture, alarm clocks, timers, ring lights, smart…

  • blind and low vision
  • generative AI
  • large language model
  • assistive technology
  • document accessibility
  • PDF accessibility
  • usability testing
  • hallucination
  • spatial reasoning
  • inclusive design

• FormA11y — Research and Development of a Tool for Remediating PDF Forms for Accessibility

  Sparsh Paliwal, Joshua Hoeflich, J. Bern Jordan, Rajiv Jain, Vlad I. Morariu, Alexa Siu, Jonathan Lazar (2025) — ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Vol. 32, No. 1

  Paliwal and colleagues — a team spanning the University of Maryland's Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility (MIDA), Northwestern, and Adobe Research — tackle a problem that has been largely overlooked in PDF accessibility research: the remedi…

  • PDF accessibility
  • PDF forms
  • PDF/UA
  • document accessibility
  • remediation tools
  • born-accessible
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • machine learning
  • usability study
  • accessibility tooling

• Analyzing Visual Layout for a Non-Visual Presentation-Document Interface

  Tatsuya Ishihara, Hironobu Takagi, Takashi Itoh, Chieko Asakawa (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper from IBM Japan tackles a fundamental accessibility challenge: presentation documents (like PowerPoint slides) convey information primarily through visual layout, making them inherently difficult for blind screen reader users to understand.…

  • screen readers
  • presentation accessibility
  • diagram accessibility
  • visual layout analysis
  • metadata
  • non-visual access
  • document accessibility
  • alternative interface

• An Uninteresting Tour Through Why Our Research Papers Aren't Accessible

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Erin L. Brady, Cole Gleason, Anhong Guo, David A. Shamma (2016) — Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA 2016)

  This paper provides a candid examination of why academic research papers, delivered almost exclusively as PDFs, remain largely inaccessible to people with disabilities. The authors — who have spent years actively trying to improve the situation — tra…

  • PDF accessibility
  • document accessibility
  • academic publishing
  • screen readers
  • alternative text

• Author Reflections on Creating Accessible Academic Papers

  Rachel Menzies, Garreth W. Tigwell, Michael Crabb (2022) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This mixed-methods study investigates why academic papers remain inaccessible despite available guidance from SIGACCESS and others. The researchers analyzed 3,866 content elements (tables, charts, images) from 330 ASSETS conference papers spanning 20…

  • document accessibility
  • PDF accessibility
  • academic publishing
  • alt text
  • data visualization
  • content elements
  • accessible authoring

• READ: A (Research) Platform for Evaluating Non-visual Access Methods to Digital Documents

  Laurent Sorin, Julie Lemarié, Mustapha Mojahid (2015) — ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  READ (Documents Architecture REstitution) is a configurable research platform for evaluating alternative methods of non-visual access to digital documents. The system addresses a well-documented problem: despite extensive functionality, screen reader…

  • document accessibility
  • research platform
  • non-visual access
  • screen readers
  • text-to-speech
  • multimodal
  • auditory interface
  • spatialized audio
  • research tools

• Increasing access to information for the print disabled through electronic documents in SGML

  Bart Bauwens, Jan Engelen, Filip Evenepoel, Chris Tobin, Tom Wesley (1994) — Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This paper describes work by the CAPS Consortium (Communication and Access to Information for People with Special Needs), an EU-funded project, and ICADD (International Committee on Accessible Document Design) to build accessibility into SGML (Standa…

  • document accessibility
  • SGML
  • structured documents
  • print disability
  • braille
  • large print
  • standards
  • accessible publishing
  • European accessibility

• Interactive audio documents

  T. V. Raman, David Gries (1994) — Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This paper describes the browsing component of AsTeR (Audio System for Technical Readings), an interactive computing system developed by T. V. Raman that audio-formats electronic documents written in LaTeX to produce navigable audio documents. The pa…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • audio formatting
  • screen readers
  • document accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • text-to-speech
  • interactive browsing

• Opening up access to online documents using essentiality tracks

  Matthew T. Atkinson, Jatinder Dhiensa, Colin H. C. Machin (2006) — Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from Loughborough University presents extensions to the "essentiality and proficiency" approach for improving document accessibility and usability. The core concept is that web page content has varying levels of importance for different us…

  • document accessibility
  • content filtering
  • XML
  • universal design
  • information overload
  • assistive technology

• Accessibility Approach to Adopting Web Technologies

  Neil King, Damien McCormack (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents findings from a comprehensive Australian Government-commissioned study by Vision Australia into the accessibility of the PDF format for people with disabilities. The three-phase research combined user consultation (focus groups wi…

  • PDF accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • blind and low vision
  • screen readers
  • document accessibility
  • government accessibility
  • user testing
  • accessibility policy