Literature Reviews

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

• The National Accessibility Portal: An Accessible Information Sharing Portal for the South African Disability Sector

  L. Coetzee, N. Govender, I. Viviers (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria describes the development of South Africa's National Accessibility Portal (NAP), a five-year research and development initiative led by the Meraka Institute in part…

  • global accessibility
  • digital divide
  • multilingual accessibility
  • developing countries
  • information sharing
  • community participation
  • inclusive design
  • Global South accessibility

• Exploring Web Accessibility Solutions in Developing Regions as Innovations for the Benefit of All

  Shadi Abou-Zahra, Shawn Lawton Henry (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  Written by two leaders of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, this paper explores the particular web accessibility challenges facing people with disabilities in developing regions and argues that solving these challenges will drive innovations bene…

  • Global South accessibility
  • digital divide
  • universal design
  • digital inclusion
  • multilingual accessibility
  • W3C
  • developing regions
  • assistive technology
  • disability rights

• The Spoken Web Application Framework: User Generated Content and Service Creation through Low-End Mobiles

  Arun Kumar, Sheetal K. Agarwal, Priyanka Manwani (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from IBM Research India presents the Spoken Web Application Framework (SWAF), a platform that expands the definition of "Web" itself to include voice-based hyperlinked content accessible through ordinary telephone calls. At the time of pub…

  • digital divide
  • voice interface
  • developing regions
  • digital inclusion
  • mobile accessibility
  • user-generated content
  • Global South accessibility
  • multilingual accessibility

• Facilita: reading assistance to the functionally illiterate

  Willian Massami Watanabe (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This doctoral consortium paper presents Facilita, a web application that uses natural language processing (NLP) to automatically simplify Portuguese web content for functionally illiterate users. In Brazil, 21.7% of the population aged 15 and over is…

  • literacy
  • cognitive accessibility
  • natural language processing
  • text simplification
  • readability
  • Portuguese
  • multilingual accessibility
  • digital inclusion

• 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

• Making Arabic PDF books accessible using gamification

  Hend AlRouqi, Hend S. Al-Khalifa (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper addresses the inaccessibility of Arabic PDF books for people with visual impairments, blindness, and dyslexia. Most online Arabic books are scanned images of printed originals, making them unreadable by screen readers and text-to-speech so…

  • document accessibility
  • gamification
  • crowdsourcing
  • OCR
  • Arabic accessibility
  • print disability
  • multilingual accessibility

• Unlocking the Potential of Web Localizers as Contributors to Image Accessibility: What Do Evaluation Tools Have to Offer?

  Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates the role of web localization professionals (translators) in maintaining image accessibility when websites are adapted for different language audiences. The author identifies a significant gap: when websites are localized from …

  • image accessibility
  • text alternatives
  • web localization
  • accessibility evaluation tools
  • quality assurance
  • multilingual accessibility
  • alt text

• A Web Based Multi-Linguists Symbol-to-Text AAC Application

  Chaohai Ding, Nawar Halabi, Lama Al-Zaben, Yunjia Li, E. A. Draffan, Mike Wald (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents Symbol Dragoman, a web-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) application that enables users who have no spoken language to communicate in both Arabic and English using pictographic symbols. The core problem addres…

  • AAC
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • symbol communication
  • multilingual accessibility
  • Arabic
  • natural language generation
  • pictograms
  • web accessibility
  • text-to-speech

• Measuring the Impact of Automated Evaluation Tools on Alternative Text Quality: A Web Translation Study

  Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez (2016) — Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents the first empirical study on web accessibility conducted around a translation task, investigating how automated evaluation tools affect the quality of image text alternatives produced by web translators. Twenty-eight professional …

  • alternative text
  • image accessibility
  • web translation
  • localization
  • automated testing
  • controlled language
  • screen readers
  • multilingual accessibility