Literature Reviews

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

• Fully Autonomous Vehicles for People with Visual Impairment: Policy, Accessibility, and Future Directions

  Paul D. S. Fink, Jessica A. Holz, Nicholas A. Giudice (2021) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This policy analysis examines how fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs) could transform mobility for people who are blind or visually impaired (BVI), while arguing that current US legislation fails to address their accessibility needs. With over 25 millio…

  • autonomous vehicles
  • transportation policy
  • blindness
  • visual impairment
  • accessible design
  • artificial intelligence
  • mobility

• Privacy Concerns for Visual Assistance Technologies

  Abigale Stangl, Kristina Shiroma, Nathan Davis, Bo Xie, Kenneth R. Fleischmann, Leah Findlater, Danna Gurari (2022) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This comprehensive study examines privacy concerns of blind users when sharing images and videos with visual assistance technologies (VATs) like Aira, Be My Eyes, and Seeing AI. The research addresses a fundamental tension: blind people must share vi…

  • visual impairment
  • privacy
  • visual assistance technology
  • artificial intelligence
  • remote sighted assistance
  • image description
  • privacy policy
  • data protection

• Imagining Artificial Intelligence Applications with People with Visual Disabilities using Tactile Ideation

  Cecily Morrison, Edward Cutrell, Anupama Dhareshwar, Kevin Doherty, Anja Thieme, Alex Taylor (2017) — Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17)

  This paper presents a novel tactile ideation methodology for working with people with visual disabilities to imagine future AI applications, and reports on cross-cultural workshops conducted in the UK (6 participants) and India (8 participants). Rath…

  • artificial intelligence
  • blindness
  • visual impairment
  • participatory design
  • design methodology
  • computer vision
  • social accessibility
  • cross-cultural research

• BrowseWithMe: An Online Clothes Shopping Assistant for People with Visual Impairments

  Abigale J. Stangl, Esha Kothari, Suyog D. Jain, Tom Yeh, Kristen Grauman, Danna Gurari (2018) — Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2018)

  This paper from the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Texas at Austin addresses the inaccessibility of online clothes shopping for people with visual impairments through both empirical investigation and a prototype AI-powered assistant…

  • blindness
  • low vision
  • web accessibility
  • online shopping
  • computer vision
  • artificial intelligence
  • image description
  • screen reader
  • alt text
  • semantic segmentation

• Intelligent Approaches in the Software Development Process: A Systematic Literature Mapping

  Luciano Arruda Teran, Alan Trindade de Almeida Silva, Giselle Lorrane Nobre Melo, Marcelle Pereira Mota (2021) — Proceedings of the X Latin American Conference on Human Computer Interaction (CLIHC)

  This short paper from the Federal University of Pará in Brazil presents a systematic literature mapping (SLM) investigating how intelligent approaches — methods and tools using artificial intelligence concepts — are used to assess and validate access…

  • software engineering
  • accessibility testing
  • artificial intelligence
  • automated testing
  • systematic review
  • software development
  • WCAG compliance

• Prediction of Web Page Accessibility Based on Structural and Textual Features

  Sina Bahram, Debadeep Sen, Robert St. Amant (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from NC State University explores whether machine learning classifiers can predict the accessibility of web pages based on structural and textual features of their DOM — features that are independent of explicit accessibility markup like a…

  • machine learning
  • accessibility evaluation
  • automated testing
  • visual impairment
  • web accessibility
  • accessibility metrics
  • artificial intelligence

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Web Accessibility: Is Conformance Evaluation a Way Forward?

  Shadi Abou-Zahra, Judy Brewer, Michael Cooper (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This short paper from three W3C/WAI staff members explores the potential and limitations of applying artificial intelligence to improve web accessibility, proposing accessibility conformance evaluation as a strategic pathway to accelerate AI adoption…

  • artificial intelligence
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG
  • automated testing
  • machine learning
  • image recognition
  • alternative text
  • conformance evaluation
  • W3C
  • accessibility standards

• Combining Semantic Tools for Automatic Evaluation of Alternative Texts

  Carlos Duarte, Carlos M. Duarte, Luís Carriço (2019) — Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents SCREW v2, an updated algorithm for automatically assessing the quality of alternative texts for images on web pages from an accessibility perspective. The work is motivated by the EU Directive 2016/2102, which requires monitoring …

  • alternative text
  • automated accessibility testing
  • image accessibility
  • semantic analysis
  • computer vision
  • artificial intelligence
  • WCAG
  • web accessibility
  • accessibility evaluation
  • natural language processing

• Visual Content Considered Private by People Who are Blind

  Abigale Stangl, Kristina Shiroma, Bo Xie, Kenneth R. Fleischmann, Danna Gurari (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

  This paper presents the first empirical study investigating what types of visual content people who are blind consider private, in the context of their use of Visual Interpreters or Description Services (VIDS) — services like Seeing AI, Aira, Be My E…

  • visual accessibility
  • blindness and low vision
  • privacy
  • computer vision
  • artificial intelligence
  • ethics
  • assistive technology
  • data protection

• Lessons Learned in Designing AI for Autistic Adults

  Andrew Begel, John Tang, Sean Andrist, Michael Barnett, Tony Carbary, Piali Choudhury, Edward Cutrell, Alberto Fung, Sasa Junuzovic, Daniel McDuff, Kael Rowan, Shibashankar Sahoo, Jennifer Frances Waldern, Jessica Wolk, Hui Zheng, Annuska Zolyomi (2020) — ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This short paper from Microsoft Research presents a candid account of a design failure and the valuable lessons it produced. The team set out to build Video Calling for Autism (VC4A), a video calling application with an "Expressiveness Mirror" that u…

  • autism
  • artificial intelligence
  • emotion recognition
  • video calling
  • participatory design
  • Wizard of Oz
  • neurodiversity
  • facial expression