Literature Reviews

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

• Modeling Touch Input for Users with Motor Impairments: Empirical Insights into Training Size Requirements

  Radu-Daniel Vatavu, Irina Petrariu, Tudor Horomnea, Ovidiu-Ciprian Ungurean (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’26)

  This CHI Extended Abstract addresses a practical question for ability-based design: how many touch observations do you actually need before you can build a user-specific model of someone's touch performance? Most touch modeling work, including Bayesi…

  • touch input
  • motor impairment
  • ability-based design
  • adaptive interfaces
  • touchscreen accessibility
  • user modeling
  • personalization
  • mobile accessibility

• ViDscribe: Multimodal AI for Customizing Audio Description and Question Answering in Online Videos

  Maryam S Cheema, Sina Elahimanesh, Pooyan Fazli, Hasti Seifi (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26)

  Cheema and colleagues (Arizona State University and Saarland University) present ViDscribe, a web platform that layers AI-generated audio description (AD) and conversational visual question answering (VQA) on top of arbitrary YouTube videos for blind…

  • video accessibility
  • audio description
  • blind and low vision
  • multimodal large language models
  • visual question answering
  • longitudinal study
  • personalization

• Turning the Knobs of Musical Emotion: Designing Emotion-Oriented Audio Control Interface for Cochlear Implant Users

  Hyojin Kim, Taein Song, Kyung Myun Lee (2026) — CHI EA '26: Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  Kim, Song, and Lee (KAIST) tackle a persistent but under-designed problem in hearing accessibility: cochlear implant (CI) users can hear music but receive it in a spectrally coarse, pitch-degraded form that blunts emotional perception. Rather than pu…

  • cochlear implant
  • music accessibility
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • audio interface
  • musical emotion
  • valence-arousal
  • personalization
  • HCI

• SituFont: A Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention Interface for Enhancing Mobile Readability in Situational Visual Impairments

  Jingruo Chen, Kexin Nie, Mingshan Zhang, Chun Yu, Zhiqi Gao, Kun Yue, Yuanchun Shi, Chen Liang (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  SituFont is a smartphone reading interface that treats situational visual impairment (SVI) as a first-class design target and dynamically adjusts font parameters in response to real-time context. The authors argue that static accessibility settings a…

  • situational visual impairment
  • situationally induced impairments and disabilities
  • adaptive typography
  • just-in-time adaptive intervention
  • human-in-the-loop
  • mobile accessibility
  • readability
  • context-aware computing
  • machine learning
  • personalization
  • Chinese text

• Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users

  Farnaz Zamiri Zeraati, Yang Cao, Yuehan Qiao, Hal Daumé III, Hernisa Kacorri (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper investigates how blind users can exert control over responses generated by conversational visual question answering (VQA) systems built on vision-language models. While prompting and steering techniques are well established in gen…

  • blind users
  • generative AI
  • visual question answering
  • VQA
  • personalization
  • customization
  • prompt engineering
  • Be My AI
  • large language models
  • assistive technology

• GenRole: Personalizing Role Play for Educators Supporting Autistic Students' Social Interaction Learning

  Yixuan Li, Keyi Zeng, Jiaqi Zong, Yingying Zhang, Hongzhu Deng, Li Wang, Xin Tong (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper introduces GenRole, a generative-AI system that helps educators build personalised role-play activities for teaching social interaction skills to autistic children. Motivated by the gap between role-play as a well-evidenced teachi…

  • generative AI
  • personalization
  • social skills training
  • autistic children
  • role play
  • special education
  • large language models
  • educational technology
  • inclusive education
  • assistive technology

• Giving Meaning to Movements: Challenges and Opportunities in Expanding Communication by Pairing Unaided AAC with Speech Generated Messages

  Imran Kabir, Sharon Ann Redmon, Lynn R. Elko, Kevin Williams, Mitchell A. Case, Dawn J. Sowers, Krista Wilkinson, Syed Masum Billah (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Kabir and colleagues tackle a long-standing split in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC): aided AAC — speech-generating devices, symbol boards, tablet apps — produces standardised, intelligible output but is slow, visually demanding, and…

  • AAC
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • motor impairment
  • speech impairment
  • wearable technology
  • IMU
  • gesture recognition
  • machine learning
  • personalization
  • participatory design
  • datasets

• A Personalized and Adaptable User Interface for a Speech and Cursor Brain-Computer Interface

  Hamza Peracha, Carrina Iacobacci, Tyler Singer-Clark, Leigh R Hochberg, Sergey D. Stavisky, David M. Brandman, Nicholas S Card (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This paper reports on the user interface design for an intracortical brain-computer interface (BCI) deployed for everyday at-home use by people with severe paralysis. The work centers on a 22-month longitudinal co-design study with one BrainGate2 tri…

  • brain-computer interface
  • AAC
  • ALS
  • amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
  • paralysis
  • speech neuroprosthesis
  • co-design
  • personalization
  • ability-based design
  • longitudinal deployment

• I, Robot? Exploring Ultra-Personalized AI-Powered AAC; an Autoethnographic Account

  Tobias M Weinberg, Ricardo E. Gonzalez Penuela, Stephanie Valencia, Thijs Roumen (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This paper is a multi-month autoethnographic study by an AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) user-researcher who fine-tuned a personalized large language model on his own communication data and then used it as the suggestion engine in hi…

  • AAC
  • autoethnography
  • large language models
  • personalization
  • agency
  • identity
  • privacy
  • fine-tuning
  • speech impairment
  • AI-mediated communication

• Do-It-Yourself AAC: Co-Designing User-Programmable AI Communication Tools with People with Aphasia

  Jong Ho Lee, Stephanie Valencia (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Lee and Valencia explore how people with aphasia (PWA) can become designers of their own AI-powered augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tools rather than users of rigid, pre-built systems. The authors note that aphasia, a language disord…

  • aphasia
  • AAC
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • end-user programming
  • generative AI
  • large language models
  • participatory design
  • co-design
  • visual programming
  • tangible interaction
  • cognitive accessibility
  • speech and language
  • stroke
  • assistive technology
  • personalization