Literature Reviews

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

• SADIe: exposing implicit information to improve accessibility

  Darren Lunn (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  Darren Lunn's Assets '07 demonstration paper introduces SADIe (Structural-Semantics for Accessibility and Device Independence), a transcoding system from the University of Manchester that uses Semantic Web ontologies to expose the implicit visual str…

  • web accessibility
  • transcoding
  • semantic web
  • ontology
  • CSS
  • screen readers
  • visual impairment
  • accessibility evaluation
  • randomisation test
  • single-subject design

• SADIe: Transcoding Based on CSS

  Simon Harper, Sean Bechhofer, Darren Lunn (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper introduces SADIe (Structural-Semantics for Accessibility and Device Independence), a system that improves web accessibility for visually impaired users by leveraging semantic information already encoded in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The…

  • visual impairment
  • web accessibility
  • transcoding
  • CSS
  • screen readers
  • semantic web
  • document engineering

• Semantic Bookmarking for Non-Visual Web Access

  Saikat Mukherjee, I. V. Ramakrishnan, Michael Kifer (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

  This paper introduces semantic bookmarking, a technique for non-visual web access that allows blind users to bookmark meaningful content segments on web pages using domain ontologies rather than structural HTML positions. The research is built on Hea…

  • web accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • screen reader
  • semantic web
  • web navigation
  • bookmarking
  • personalization
  • information retrieval
  • ontology

• A Semantic Transcoding System to Adapt Web Services for Users with Disabilities

  Anita W. Huang, Neel Sundaresan (2000) — Proceedings of the Fourth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '00)

  This paper from IBM Almaden Research Center presents Aurora, a semantic transcoding system that adapts web-based services for users with disabilities by extracting the meaning of web content rather than simply reformatting its syntax. The key problem…

  • web accessibility
  • web transcoding
  • content adaptation
  • XML
  • semantic web
  • assistive technology
  • web navigation
  • adaptive interface

• A user evaluation of the SADIe transcoder

  Darren Lunn, Sean Bechhofer, Simon Harper (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a user evaluation of SADIe (Structural-Semantics for Accessibility and Device Independence), a system that uses Semantic Web technologies to make web pages more accessible to screen reader users. The core problem SADIe addresses i…

  • web accessibility
  • screen readers
  • semantic web
  • transcoding
  • visual impairment
  • ontology
  • web content transformation
  • CSS
  • assistive technology

• Speed-Dial: A Surrogate Mouse for Non-Visual Web Browsing

  Syed Masum Billah, Vikas Ashok, Donald E. Porter, IV Ramakrishnan (2017) — Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17)

  This paper presents Speed-Dial, a system that uses an off-the-shelf Microsoft Surface Dial as a surrogate mouse for non-visual web browsing. The core problem it addresses is the fundamental mismatch between how sighted and blind users interact with t…

  • screen readers
  • web accessibility
  • blindness
  • haptic technology
  • input devices
  • semantic web
  • assistive technology
  • non-visual interaction

• The semantic web, web accessibility, and device independence

  Lisa Seeman (2004) — Proceedings of the 2004 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  Written by Lisa Seeman of UB Access, this paper argues that Semantic Web technologies — particularly RDF (Resource Description Framework) annotations — can dramatically improve web accessibility beyond what WCAG guidelines alone can achieve, especial…

  • semantic web
  • RDF
  • cognitive accessibility
  • learning disabilities
  • personalization
  • knowledge representation
  • assistive technology

• Semantic Web enabled web accessibility evaluation tools

  Shadi Abou-Zahra (2005) — Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper by Shadi Abou-Zahra of the W3C presents the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) as a Semantic Web-based solution to fundamental problems in web accessibility evaluation tooling. Abou-Zahra identifies that the accessibility evaluation too…

  • automated testing
  • accessibility testing
  • semantic web
  • EARL
  • evaluation tools
  • quality assurance
  • interoperability
  • W3C

• The SADIe Transcoding Platform

  Darren Lunn, Sean Bechhofer, Simon Harper (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This short paper presents the SADIe (Structural-Semantics for Accessibility and Device Independence) transcoding platform, developed at the University of Manchester. SADIe addresses a fundamental challenge for visually impaired screen reader users: w…

  • web accessibility
  • transcoding
  • screen readers
  • visual impairment
  • semantic web
  • CSS
  • ontology
  • assistive technology

• Modelling web navigation with the user in mind

  Ruslan Fayzrakhmanov, Max Göbel, Wolfgang Holzinger, Bernhard Krüpl, Andreas Mager, Robert Baumgartner (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper introduces the ABBA (Advanced Barrier-free Browser Accessibility) framework, a novel approach to screen reader design that replaces traditional sequential DOM-based navigation with a multi-axial navigation model. The core insight is that c…

  • screen readers
  • web navigation
  • visual impairment
  • semantic web
  • ontology
  • web information extraction
  • document structure