Literature Reviews

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

• Steering Generative Models for Accessibility: EasyRead Image Generation

  Nicolas Dickenmann, Yanis Merzouki, Sonia Laguna, Thy Nowak-Tran, Emanuele Palumbo, Julia E. Vogt, Gerda Binder (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26)

  Dickenmann and colleagues (ETH Zurich and UNICEF Digital Impact Division) present the first open-source pipeline for generating Easy Read-style pictograms using a fine-tuned diffusion model. Easy Read pairs short sentences with simple, high-contrast …

  • diffusion models
  • stable diffusion
  • LoRA
  • generative AI
  • cognitive accessibility
  • intellectual disability
  • pictograms
  • Easy Read
  • AAC
  • symbol communication
  • image generation

• When the World Opens Up: Journeys of People with Intellectual Disabilities in Social Virtual Reality

  Alexandra Covaci, Winnie Tsang, Sophia Ppali, Paraskevi Triantafyllopoulou, Monica Perusquia-Hernandez, Oscar Zhou, Fotis Liarokapis, Marios Constantinides, Mohamed Khamis, Shujun Li (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper challenges the dominant remedial paradigm in HCI research on virtual reality and people with intellectual disabilities (ID), which has largely framed VR as a tool for training functional life skills (cooking, shopping, transport) …

  • intellectual disability
  • virtual reality
  • social VR
  • VRChat
  • disability justice
  • participatory design
  • self-determination
  • interdependence
  • digital citizenship
  • crip technoscience
  • reflexive thematic analysis
  • easy read

• I Can Do It: Exploring Voice Assistants for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

  Madhuka Nadeeshani, Jacqueline Johnstone, Kirsten Ellis, Swamy Ananthanarayan (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper reports an eight-week deployment of screen-based voice assistants (Google Nest Hub and Amazon Echo Show 8) with 17 adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) — including co-occurring autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, Rett …

  • voice assistant
  • intellectual disability
  • smart display
  • cognitive accessibility
  • qualitative research
  • speech recognition
  • peer support

• Supporting Money Management among Adults with Down Syndrome: A Multi-Technology Probe Study

  Hailey L. Johnson, Heidi Spalitta, Callie Y. Kim, Bilge Mutlu (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Johnson, Spalitta, Kim, and Mutlu designed three cash-based budgeting technology probes for adults with Down syndrome (AwDS) and ran a comparative usage study with seven participants aged 19-39. The work is motivated by a gap between special-educatio…

  • Down syndrome
  • intellectual disability
  • assistive technology
  • financial accessibility
  • augmented reality
  • tangible interface
  • gamification
  • technology probe
  • autonomy
  • HCI
  • qualitative research

• Co-Design of Technology with and for People with Intellectual Disabilities: A Scoping Review of Methods and Inclusion Strategies

  Jacqueline Johnstone, Madhuka Nadeeshani, Preity Pai, Troy McGee, Kirsten Ellis, Swamy Ananthanarayan (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This scoping review examines how people with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) and their support networks have been involved in the co-design of technology, addressing a persistent gap: despite HCI's growing emphasis on inclusive design, people with ID …

  • co-design
  • intellectual disability
  • participatory design
  • inclusive design
  • scoping review
  • HCI
  • accessibility research

• How to design cognitively accessible digital design patterns for booking tickets: A participative study with Easy-to-Read users.

  Sabina Sieghart, Björn Rohles, Kim Corti, Trang Nguyen, Ann Bessemans (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Sieghart and colleagues tackle a persistent gap in cognitive accessibility research: digital design patterns are almost never validated with Easy-to-Read (ETR) users — adults with intellectual disabilities who can read at a basic level. The paper rep…

  • cognitive accessibility
  • Easy-to-Read
  • intellectual disability
  • participatory design
  • digital design patterns
  • usability
  • inclusion
  • user study
  • interaction design
  • e-commerce accessibility

• I Can't Keep Up: Accessibility Barriers in Video-Based Learning for Individuals with Borderline Intellectual Functioning

  Hyehyun Chu, Seungju Kim, Chen Zhou, Yu-Kai Hung, Saelyne Yang, Hyun W. Ka, Juho Kim (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper by Chu, Kim, Zhou, Hung, Yang, Ka, and Kim (KAIST and SkillBench) examines accessibility barriers in video-based learning (VBL) for individuals with Borderline Intellectual Functioning (BIF)—people with IQ scores roughly 70–85 who…

  • cognitive accessibility
  • video-based learning
  • video accessibility
  • borderline intellectual functioning
  • intellectual disability
  • inclusive design
  • self-efficacy
  • working memory
  • qualitative research
  • e-learning

• Anthropomorphism in Human-Robot Interactions with Adults with Intellectual Disabilities and Robots

  Saminda Sundeepa Balasuriya, Laurianne Sitbon, Alicia Mitchell (2026) — Journal of Human-Robot Interaction

  This qualitative study re-analyses video data from two prior field studies with an Australian disability service organisation, in which adults with intellectual disabilities interacted with two commercially available social robots: Pepper, a 120 cm h…

  • intellectual disability
  • human-robot interaction
  • social robots
  • anthropomorphism
  • inclusive design
  • qualitative research
  • thematic analysis
  • co-design

• Cognitively Motivated Features for Readability Assessment

  Lijun Feng, Noémie Elhadad, Matt Huenerfauth (2009) — Proceedings of the 12th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2009)

  Feng, Elhadad, and Huenerfauth (2009) develop and evaluate an automatic readability-assessment tool targeted specifically at adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) — people in the 'mild' category (IQ 55-70), who comprise roughly 3% of the U.S. po…

  • readability
  • automatic readability assessment
  • cognitive accessibility
  • intellectual disability
  • mild intellectual disability
  • text simplification
  • plain language
  • entity density
  • lexical chains
  • working memory
  • discourse features
  • Flesch-Kincaid
  • reading level
  • reading comprehension
  • user study
  • natural language processing
  • named entity recognition
  • computational linguistics
  • text-to-speech
  • literacy
  • Weekly Reader corpus
  • cognitively motivated features

• A Comparison of Features for Automatic Readability Assessment

  Lijun Feng, Martin Jansche, Matt Huenerfauth, Noémie Elhadad (2010) — Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING '10), Posters

  Feng et al. (2010) is a computational-linguistics paper that compares a wide variety of text features for automatically predicting the grade level of reading material aimed at primary-school students. The motivation is both intrinsic — traditional re…

  • readability
  • automatic readability assessment
  • text simplification
  • plain language
  • cognitive accessibility
  • intellectual disability
  • natural language processing
  • machine learning
  • language models
  • computational linguistics
  • POS features
  • discourse features
  • entity density
  • lexical chains
  • entity grid
  • coreference
  • Flesch-Kincaid
  • grade level prediction
  • reading level
  • Weekly Reader corpus
  • support vector machines
  • classification