Literature Reviews

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

• Touchable Online Braille Generator

  Wooseob Jeong (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This short paper from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee presents a prototype online Braille generator that uses consumer force feedback mouse technology to make web text tactilely accessible to blind and visually impaired users. The system takes …

  • braille
  • force feedback
  • haptic technology
  • visual impairment
  • web accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • low-cost accessibility

• Sparsha: A Comprehensive Indian Language Toolset for the Blind

  Anirban Lahiri, Satya Jyoti Chattopadhyay, Anupam Basu (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper presents Sparsha ("feeling of touch" in Hindi), the first comprehensive toolset enabling over 13 million visually impaired people in the Indian subcontinent to read and write in their native languages using a computer. Existing Braille tra…

  • braille
  • visual impairment
  • Indian languages
  • multilingual accessibility
  • screen reader
  • text-to-speech
  • tactile graphics
  • internationalization
  • digital inclusion
  • Global South accessibility

• Automating Tactile Graphics Translation

  Richard E. Ladner, Melody Y. Ivory, Rajesh Rao, Sheryl Burgstahler, Dan Comden, Sangyun Hahn, Matthew Renzelmann, Satria Krisnandi, Mahalakshmi Ramasamy, Beverly Slabosky, Andrew Martin, Amelia Lacenski, Stuart Olsen, Dmitri Groce (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper addresses the critical shortage of tactile graphics available to blind students in mathematics, science, and engineering (MSE) courses. Postsecondary science textbooks may have images on half their pages — sometimes up to 500 images per bo…

  • tactile graphics
  • braille
  • STEM accessibility
  • image processing
  • machine learning
  • visual impairment
  • assistive technology
  • automation
  • accessible publishing

• UMA: A System for Universal Mathematics Accessibility

  A. I. Karshmer, G. Gupta, E. Pontelli, K. Miesenberger, N. Ammalai, D. Gopal, M. Batusic, B. Stöger, B. Palmer, H-F. Guo (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

  This paper presents the Universal Mathematics Accessibility (UMA) system, a multi-institution collaboration to make mathematical content interoperable between the notation systems used by blind and sighted individuals. The fundamental problem is that…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • braille
  • visual impairment
  • STEM accessibility
  • MathML
  • Nemeth Braille
  • aural navigation
  • format conversion
  • assistive technology

• New Technology Enables Many-Fold Reduction in the Cost of Refreshable Braille Displays

  John Roberts, Oliver Slattery, David Kardos, Brett Swope (2000) — Proceedings of the Fourth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '00)

  This paper from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) describes a novel rotating-wheel design for refreshable Braille displays that could reduce costs by up to a factor of ten compared to existing displays. The dominant cost facto…

  • braille
  • refreshable braille display
  • assistive technology
  • hardware
  • tactile accessibility
  • braille technology
  • digital inclusion

• Reading and Writing Mathematics: The MAVIS Project

  A. I. Karshmer, G. Gupta, S. Geiiger, C. Weaver (1998) — Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This paper from New Mexico State University presents the MAVIS (Mathematics Accessible to Visually Impaired Students) project, an NSF-funded effort to develop comprehensive tools for bidirectional communication of mathematics between blind students a…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • STEM accessibility
  • Nemeth code
  • LaTeX
  • blindness
  • braille
  • sonification
  • language translation
  • assistive technology
  • education

• Combining Haptic and Braille Technologies: Design Issues and Pilot Study

  Christophe Ramstein (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper presents the Pantobraille, a novel device that combines a single braille cell with a pantograph-based force feedback device to allow blind users to navigate and read content on graphical user interfaces. Developed as part of the CITI PC-Ac…

  • braille
  • haptic technology
  • force feedback
  • braille display
  • tactile accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • non-visual interaction
  • graphical user interface accessibility

• Designing Interface Toolkit with Dynamic Selectable Modality

  Shiro Kawai, Hitoshi Aida, Tadao Saito (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper presents the Fruit (Flexible and Rearrangeable User Interface Toolkit) system, an architecture for building user interfaces that allow dynamic switching between interaction modalities at runtime. The authors argue that the rigid coupling b…

  • multimodal interaction
  • user interface design
  • assistive technology
  • abstract widgets
  • toolkit design
  • modality switching
  • screen reader
  • braille

• Tactile Chart Generation Tool

  Cagatay Goncu, Kim Marriott (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a Java application that automatically generates tactile bar and pie charts from raw data values provided in a formatted text file. Developed in collaboration with Vision Australia, the tool addresses the time-consuming and expensi…

  • tactile graphics
  • data visualization
  • visual impairment
  • braille
  • accessible publishing
  • education
  • assistive technology
  • design tools

• A Tactile Windowing System for Blind Users

  Denise Prescher, Gerhard Weber, Martin Spindler (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper from Technische Universität Dresden presents the Braille Window System (BWS), a windowing interface designed for a large planar tactile display — the BrailleDis9000, a touch-sensitive pin-matrix of 120 columns and 60 rows (7,200 pins). Sta…

  • braille
  • tactile display
  • tactile graphics
  • gesture interaction
  • blindness
  • screen reader
  • windowing system
  • GUI accessibility
  • pin-matrix display
  • multitouch