Literature Reviews

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

• From Screen Reading to Aural Glancing: Towards Instant Access to Key Page Sections

  Prathik Gadde, Davide Bolchini (2014) — Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS 2014)

  This paper addresses a fundamental problem in screen reader navigation: while sighted users can glance at a web page to instantly understand its structure and locate relevant sections, screen reader users are forced to listen to content serially, mak…

  • screen readers
  • web navigation
  • blindness
  • visual impairment
  • e-commerce accessibility
  • aural browsing
  • crowdsourcing
  • JAWS

• Building Keyboard Accessible Drag and Drop

  Rucha Somani, Jiahang Xin, Bijay Bhaskar Deo, Yun Huang (2014) — Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This demo paper presents an API that enables web developers to create keyboard-accessible drag and drop (DnD) components for web applications, particularly e-learning systems. Drag and drop interactions are widely used in educational websites for cla…

  • keyboard accessibility
  • drag and drop
  • web accessibility
  • e-learning
  • screen readers
  • web development
  • ARIA

• Accessible Web Chat Interface

  Valentyn Melnyk (2014) — Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper addresses the accessibility of web chat widgets — ubiquitous real-time communication tools embedded in web applications for customer support, social interaction, and service delivery. Screen readers like JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA do not re…

  • web accessibility
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • ARIA
  • web widgets
  • chat accessibility
  • blindness

• Capti-Speak: A Speech-Enabled Accessible Web Interface

  Vikas Ashok (2014) — Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper presents Capti-Speak, a speech-augmented screen reader interface for the web that allows blind users to issue voice commands alongside traditional keyboard shortcuts. Built on top of the Capti web browsing application (which provides a JAW…

  • screen readers
  • speech recognition
  • voice interface
  • web accessibility
  • blindness
  • web browsing
  • multimodal interaction

• Evaluating the Accessibility of Line Graphs through Textual Summaries for Visually Impaired Users

  Priscilla Moraes, Gabriel Sina, Kathleen McCoy, Sandra Carberry (2014) — Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper presents the SIGHT (Summarizing Information GrapHics Textually) system, which automatically generates natural language summaries of line graphs found in online popular media articles such as newspapers and magazines. The system addresses a…

  • data visualization
  • natural language generation
  • information graphics
  • blindness
  • screen readers
  • alternative text
  • reading level
  • graph accessibility

• Text-to-Speeches: Evaluating the Perception of Concurrent Speech by Blind People

  João Guerreiro, Daniel Gonçalves (2014) — ASSETS '14: Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This paper investigates whether blind people can leverage the Cocktail Party Effect—the human ability to focus on one speech source among several while still detecting relevant content in the background—to more efficiently scan digital information. S…

  • visual impairment
  • blindness
  • screen readers
  • speech perception
  • cocktail party effect
  • spatial audio
  • information scanning
  • neuroplasticity

• Keeping Up with Technology: Commentary on "Computers and People with Disabilities"

  Alistair D. N. Edwards (2008) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This reflective commentary by Alistair Edwards examines what has—and crucially, what has not—changed in accessible computing since Glinert and York's influential 1992 paper. Edwards frames his analysis through a fashion-versus-style metaphor: while t…

  • accessibility history
  • screen readers
  • GUI accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • web accessibility
  • catch-up problem

• Towards A Universally Usable Human Interaction Proof: Evaluation of Task Completion Strategies

  Graig Sauer, Jonathan Lazar, Harry Hochheiser, Jinjuan Feng (2010) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper addresses a critical accessibility barrier: CAPTCHAs and human-interaction proofs (HIPs) that effectively lock people with visual impairments out of web services. Prior research showed that blind users could only solve audio CAPTCHAs about…

  • CAPTCHA
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • universal usability
  • web security
  • authentication

• Spindex (Speech Index) Improves Auditory Menu Acceptance and Navigation Performance

  Myounghoon Jeon, Bruce N. Walker (2011) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper introduces the "spindex" (speech index), a novel auditory cue designed to improve navigation through spoken menus on mobile devices. The spindex works by pronouncing the first letter of each menu item before the full text-to-speech (TTS) r…

  • auditory interfaces
  • mobile accessibility
  • text-to-speech
  • screen readers
  • user interface design
  • blindness
  • sonification

• Multimodal Presentation of Two-Dimensional Charts: An Investigation Using Open Office XML and Microsoft Excel

  Iyad Abu Doush, Enrico Pontelli, Tran Cao Son, Dominic Simon, Ou Ma (2010) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents a comprehensive system for making Microsoft Excel charts accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired through multimodal haptic and audio feedback. The system extracts chart data from the OOXML format introduced in Exce…

  • haptic feedback
  • data visualization
  • screen readers
  • multimodal interaction
  • force feedback
  • charts and graphs
  • blindness