Literature Reviews — A11y Paradise

Social Media Platforms for Low-Income Blind People in India

Aditya Vashistha, Edward Cutrell, Nicola Dell, Richard Anderson (2015) — ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

This groundbreaking study provides the first analysis of social media use and non-use by low-income blind people in rural and peri-urban India—a population largely absent from accessibility research despite India having the world's largest blind popu…

Blind Photographers and VizSnap: A Long-Term Study

Dustin Adams, Sri Kurniawan, Cynthia Herrera, Veronica Kang, Natalie Friedman (2016) — Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '16)

This paper reports on a two-month longitudinal study with 13 blind participants (ages 18-65, nine totally blind and two with some light perception, seven adventitiously and six congenitally blind) using VizSnap, a free iPhone app designed to help bli…

Prosumers and accessibility: how to ensure a productive interaction

Yod Samuel Martín García, Beatriz San Miguel González, Juan Carlos Yelmo García (2009) — Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)

This paper examines how accessibility can be ensured in user-generated content (UGC) created by "prosumers" — ordinary web users who both consume and produce content but lack any training, awareness, or accountability regarding accessibility. The aut…

Augmenting social media accessibility

Roberto Borrino, Marco Furini, Marco Roccetti (2009) — Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)

This paper presents SOMFA (SOcial Media For All), an architecture that transforms web-based social media content into multimodal audio/video presentations suitable for television sets. The system addresses the growing social divide created by social …

Using data from social media websites to inspire the design of assistive technology

Xing Yu (2016) — Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

This doctoral consortium paper proposes using social media data as a low-cost, scalable method to inform the design of assistive technology, addressing limitations of traditional user research approaches. The author argues that designing assistive te…

Making Memes Accessible

Cole Gleason, Amy Pavel, Xingyu Liu, Patrick Carrington, Lydia B. Chilton, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

This paper presents two semi-automatic methods for making internet image macro memes accessible to people with vision impairments: rich alternative text descriptions and audio macro memes. Memes are a pervasive form of online communication, yet they …

HowToApp: Supporting Life Skills Development of Young Adults with Intellectual Disability

Andrew A. Bayor (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

This student research abstract describes the co-design and preliminary evaluation of HowToApp, a mobile application that helps young adults with intellectual disability (ID) search for, watch, archive, and share YouTube videos related to their person…

Leveraging Participation: Supporting Skills Development of Young Adults with Intellectual Disability Using Social Media

Andrew A. Bayor, Laurianne Sitbon, Bernd Ploderer, Filip Bircanin, Stewart Koplick, Margot Brereton (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

This paper investigates how young adults with intellectual disability (ID) can leverage their existing social media participation — particularly on YouTube and Facebook — to develop new skills beyond entertainment. The researchers conducted a partici…

Making GIFs Accessible

Cole Gleason, Amy Pavel, Himalini Gururaj, Kris Kitani, Jeffrey Bigham (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

This Carnegie Mellon University study examines the accessibility of GIFs on social media, a visual medium that has become central to online conversation but remains largely inaccessible to people with vision impairments. The researchers conducted a m…

Disability and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Using Twitter to Understand Accessibility during Rapid Societal Transition

Cole Gleason, Stephanie Valencia, Lynn Kirabo, Jason Wu, Anhong Guo, Elizabeth Jeanne Carter, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Cynthia Bennett, Amy Pavel (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

This Carnegie Mellon University study uses Twitter data to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected people with disabilities (PWD) across three critical domains where technology and accessibility intersect: grocery delivery servi…