Literature Reviews

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

• Web accessibility and people with dyslexia: a survey on techniques and guidelines

  Vagner Figueredo de Santana, Rosimeire de Oliveira, Leonelo Dell Anhol Almeida, Maria Cecília Calani Baranauskas (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the state of the art on dyslexia and web accessibility, synthesising findings from academic research, dyslexia organisations (particularly the British Dyslexia Association), and practitioner guidance into…

  • dyslexia
  • cognitive accessibility
  • web accessibility guidelines
  • readability
  • inclusive design
  • universal design
  • typography

• The potential of adaptive interfaces as an accessibility aid for older web users

  David Sloan, Matthew Tylee Atkinson, Colin Machin, Yunqiu Li (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper examines the challenge of supporting web accessibility for older people whose capabilities fluctuate gradually over time due to age-related decline in vision, hearing, dexterity, and cognition. The authors argue that current accessibility …

  • aging
  • adaptive interfaces
  • assistive technology
  • older users
  • personalization
  • user profiling
  • ethics
  • inclusive design

• Improving accessibility to mathematical formulas: the Wikipedia math accessor

  Leo Ferres, Jose Fuentes Sepúlveda (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents MathAcc, an assistive technology system that generates natural language descriptions in Spanish for the more than 355,000 mathematical formulas found across 26,174 Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia renders formulas as rasterised PNG i…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • blindness
  • natural language generation
  • MathML
  • Wikipedia
  • STEM accessibility
  • multilingual accessibility
  • screen readers

• JustSpeak: enabling universal voice control on Android

  Yu Zhong, T. V. Raman, Casey Burkhardt, Fadi Biadsy, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper introduces JustSpeak, a universal voice control system for Android that works across all applications without requiring any developer intervention. Unlike Google Now or Siri, which only support pre-defined commands for specific apps, JustS…

  • voice interface
  • mobile accessibility
  • blindness
  • motor accessibility
  • Android
  • speech recognition
  • screen readers
  • assistive technology

• Estimating dyslexia in the web

  Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Luz Rello (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents the first attempt to estimate the prevalence of dyslexic writing errors in English-language web content. The authors developed a classification system distinguishing five types of lexical errors: dyslexic errors (multi-character r…

  • dyslexia
  • cognitive accessibility
  • web content quality
  • natural language processing
  • spelling errors
  • readability

• Wizard-of-Oz evaluation of speech-driven web browsing interface for people with vision impairments

  Vikas Ashok, Yevgen Borodin, Svetlana Stoyanchev, Yuri Puzis, I. V. Ramakrishnan (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents a Wizard-of-Oz study with 24 blind participants to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of speech-driven web browsing as an alternative to traditional keyboard-based screen reader interaction. The study was motivated by three …

  • blindness
  • screen readers
  • speech interface
  • voice interface
  • web navigation
  • web automation
  • wizard of Oz
  • dialog systems

• Empathic communication of accessibility barriers in web 2.0 editing

  Afra Pascual, Mireia Ribera, Toni Granollers (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents EmpathicEditor4Accessibility (EE4A), a prototype web editor that helps non-technical content writers understand and fix accessibility errors by communicating barriers through the perspective of disabled personas rather than techni…

  • authoring tools
  • user-generated content
  • accessibility education
  • empathic design
  • WCAG compliance
  • content management systems
  • personas

• Marker-based image recognition of dynamic content for the visually impaired

  Andréa Britto Mattos, Carlos Cardonha, Diego Gallo, Priscilla Avegliano, Ricardo Herrmann, Sergio Borger (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from IBM Research Brazil introduces a marker-based image recognition technique to help visually impaired people access information displayed on public panels and boards with fixed layouts but dynamic content — such as vending machines, spl…

  • computer vision
  • visual impairment
  • mobile accessibility
  • object recognition
  • situational disability
  • independent living
  • assistive technology

• Using simultaneous audio sources to speed-up blind people's web scanning

  João Guerreiro (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This doctoral consortium paper proposes using multiple simultaneous audio sources to help blind users scan web content faster. The core problem is that screen readers present information sequentially — one item at a time — while sighted users can vis…

  • blindness
  • screen readers
  • spatial audio
  • web navigation
  • auditory perception
  • information overload
  • non-visual interaction

• Exploratory study of web navigation strategies for users with physical disabilities

  J. Eduardo Pérez, Myriam Arrue, Xabier Valencia, Lourdes Moreno (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This exploratory study examined the web navigation strategies of 11 users with upper-body physical impairments, revealing substantial heterogeneity in how people with similar disability types interact with websites. Participants used a wide range of …

  • motor accessibility
  • physical disability
  • assistive technology
  • web navigation
  • input devices
  • adaptive interfaces
  • user research