Literature Reviews

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

• A mean for communication between deaf and hearing pairs in inclusive educational settings: the Sessai app

  Soraia Silva Prietch, Emanuel José dos Santos, Lucia Vilela Leite Filgueiras (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This extended abstract presents Sessai, an Android application designed to facilitate communication between Deaf or Hard of Hearing (D/HH) students and their hearing peers and teachers in inclusive classroom settings in Brazil. The app uses a WhatsAp…

  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • sign language
  • inclusive education
  • mobile application
  • assistive technology
  • speech-to-text
  • real-time communication
  • Brazilian Sign Language

• A plug-in to aid online reading in Spanish

  Luz Rello, Roberto Carlini, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents CASSA, a free Chrome browser plug-in designed to help people read Spanish text on the web by providing simpler synonyms and definitions on demand for complex words. The tool builds on the CASSA (Context Aware Synonym Simplificatio…

  • text simplification
  • lexical simplification
  • dyslexia
  • cognitive accessibility
  • readability
  • browser extension
  • assistive technology
  • Spanish language

• Dyslexia and web accessibility: synergies and challenges

  Luz Rello (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This position paper reviews the key challenges of studying dyslexia in the context of web accessibility, drawing on Rello's extensive body of research including her doctoral work on the DysWebxia text accessibility model. The paper addresses three in…

  • dyslexia
  • cognitive accessibility
  • readability
  • typography
  • web accessibility guidelines
  • text customization
  • font size
  • typeface

• Creating accessible PDFs for conference proceedings

  Erin Brady, Yu Zhong, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates the accessibility of PDF research papers published at major ACM conferences related to accessibility and human-computer interaction. The authors conducted a two-part analysis: first, an automated accessibility check of 1,811 p…

  • PDF accessibility
  • document accessibility
  • tagged PDF
  • PDF/UA
  • screen readers
  • alternative text
  • automated testing
  • conference proceedings

• Understanding Accessibility as a Process through the Analysis of Feedback from Disabled Students

  Tim Coughlan, Thomas Daniel Ullmann, Kate Lister (2017) — Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from The Open University UK analyzes over 6,000 open comment feedback responses from disabled students (out of 93,148 total responses) to argue that accessibility must be understood as an ongoing process rather than a state achieved throug…

  • education accessibility
  • disability
  • organizational accessibility
  • distance learning
  • accessibility theory
  • user research
  • qualitative research

• Introducing Game Elements in Crowdsourced Video Captioning by Non-Experts

  Hernisa Kacorri, Kaoru Shinkawa, Shin Saito (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from CUNY Graduate Center and IBM Research Tokyo presents a gamified crowdsourcing platform for video captioning that combines ASR output with non-expert human transcription to improve caption accuracy without monetary rewards. The system …

  • captioning
  • crowdsourcing
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • gamification
  • automatic speech recognition
  • human computation

• Comparing Accessibility Evaluation Plug-ins

  Tânia Frazão, Carlos Duarte (2020) — Proceedings of the 17th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from the University of Lisbon systematically compares eight free Chrome browser extensions for automated accessibility evaluation: Microsoft Accessibility Insights, ACCESS Assistant Community, ARC Toolkit, aXe Chrome Plugin, Lighthouse, Te…

  • automated testing
  • accessibility testing
  • WCAG
  • web accessibility
  • evaluation tools
  • browser extensions

• Barriers to Employment: The Deaf Multimedia Authoring Tax

  Christian Vogler, Abraham Glasser, Raja Kushalnagar, Matthew Seita, Mariana Arroyo Chavez, Keith Delk, Paige DeVries, Molly Feanny, Bernard Thompson, James Waller (2025) — Proceedings of the 22nd International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from Gallaudet University describes through firsthand experience the enormous additional burden — termed the "deaf multimedia authoring tax" — that deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people face when creating accessible multimedia content for …

  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • sign language
  • content creation
  • workplace accessibility
  • captioning
  • audio description
  • text-to-speech
  • disability employment

• AIDE: An Automatic Image Description Engine for Review Imagery

  Rachana Sreedhar, Nicole Tan, Jingyue Zhang, Kim Jin, Spencer Gregson, Eli Moreta-Feliz, Niveditha Samudrala, Shrenik Sadalgi (2022) — Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from Wayfair presents AIDE, a multimodal machine learning system that automatically generates contextual alt-text for user-submitted review images in e-commerce — a category of imagery that is particularly inaccessible because it is user-g…

  • alt text
  • computer vision
  • blindness
  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • machine learning
  • natural language processing
  • image accessibility
  • e-commerce

• SoundCells: Designing a Browser-Based Music Technology for Braille and Print Notation

  William Payne, Fabiha Ahmed, Michael Gardell, R. Luke DuBois, Amy Hurst (2022) — Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from New York University presents SoundCells, a free, open-source, browser-based music notation tool designed to be accessible to screen reader users while outputting music in three formats simultaneously: audio playback, visual print scor…

  • music accessibility
  • blindness
  • visual impairment
  • braille
  • screen readers
  • co-design
  • creative accessibility
  • web accessibility