Literature Reviews

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

• WebAnywhere: Experiences with a New Delivery Model for Access Technology

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Wendy Chisholm, Richard E. Ladner (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This follow-up paper describes the evolution of WebAnywhere two years after its initial release, documenting how it expanded from a web-based screen reader for blind users into a broader platform for delivering access technology. Released publicly in…

  • screen readers
  • blindness
  • low vision
  • web-based assistive technology
  • text-to-speech
  • speech recognition
  • open source
  • digital equity
  • internationalization
  • cloud computing
  • AT delivery

• WebAnywhere: A Screen Reading Interface for the Web on Any Computer

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Craig M. Prince, Sangyun Hahn, Richard E. Ladner (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This short paper introduces WebAnywhere, a free web-based screen reader from the University of Washington that enables blind users to access the web from any computer with a standard browser and sound capability, without installing any software. The …

  • screen readers
  • blindness
  • web-based assistive technology
  • text-to-speech
  • digital equity
  • cloud computing
  • JavaScript
  • proxy server
  • portable accessibility

• Designing Search Engine User Interfaces for the Visually Impaired

  Barbara Leporini, Patrizia Andronico, Marina Buzzi (2004) — Proceedings of the 2004 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper examines the fundamental differences between visual and aural perception of search engine interfaces and proposes specific design guidelines to improve usability for blind and visually impaired users interacting via screen readers. The aut…

  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • search engines
  • user interface design
  • web navigation
  • blindness
  • usability
  • keyboard navigation
  • aural perception
  • information retrieval

• What's the Web Like If You Can't See It?

  Chieko Asakawa (2005) — Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This landmark paper by Chieko Asakawa of IBM Japan traces the evolution of non-visual web access from the early 1990s through 2005, drawing extensively on the author's own experience as a blind researcher and developer. Asakawa chronicles the develop…

  • screen readers
  • voice browsers
  • alternative text
  • skip navigation
  • blindness
  • non-visual web access
  • disability simulation
  • web accessibility evaluation
  • compliance versus usability

• Towards the Usage of Pauses in Audio-Described Videos

  Benoît Encelle, Magali Ollagnier Beldame, Yannick Prié (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper explores the use of "artificial pauses" — brief interruptions inserted into video playback — as a technique for delivering audio descriptions that cannot fit within the natural gaps in a video's soundtrack. Classical audio description is c…

  • audio description
  • video accessibility
  • blindness
  • visual impairment
  • multimedia accessibility
  • speech synthesis

• A Mobile Interactive Maps Application for a Visually Impaired Audience

  Nikolaos Kaklanis, Konstantinos Votis, Dimitrios Tzovaras (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This demo paper presents "Open Touch/Sound Maps," an Android mobile application that makes interactive maps accessible to visually impaired and blind users through multimodal feedback. Web-based spatial information resources like OpenStreetMap are in…

  • visual impairment
  • accessible maps
  • sonification
  • haptic feedback
  • mobile accessibility
  • multimodal interaction
  • text-to-speech
  • blindness
  • navigation

• Adapting data table to improve web accessibility

  Pauli P. Y. Lai (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper addresses the challenge of making web data tables accessible to screen reader users, particularly when tables are not properly marked up with semantic HTML tags like <th>, <thead>, and <tfoot>. Screen readers present content linearly, so l…

  • blindness
  • screen readers
  • data tables
  • content adaptation
  • web accessibility
  • mobile accessibility
  • information architecture

• 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

• 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