Literature Reviews
Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.
249 results found tagged mobile accessibility.
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Understanding the Touchscreen-based Nonvisual Target Acquisition Task Performance of Screen Reader Users
This study investigates how screen reader users find and select targets on a smartphone touchscreen without visual cues, examining the effects of screen size, target size, and the ratio between them. Twelve participants with visual impairments (three…
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"I just thought it was me": How Smartphones Fail Users with Mild-to-Moderate Dexterity Differences
This paper examines the smartphone experiences of people with mild-to-moderate dexterity (MMD) challenges — a population largely overlooked by accessibility research that tends to focus on more severe motor disabilities requiring specialized assistiv…
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AdaptiveSound: An Interactive Feedback-Loop System to Improve Sound Recognition for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users
This paper introduces AdaptiveSound, the first feedback-loop sound recognition system designed for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) users. Sound recognition tools help DHH people become aware of environmental sounds ranging from safety-critical alerts …
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Understanding Personalized Accessibility through Teachable AI: Designing and Evaluating Find My Things for People who are Blind or Low Vision
This paper from Microsoft Research presents Find My Things, one of the first fully realized end-to-end teachable AI applications for accessibility. The app allows people who are blind or low vision to teach their phone to recognize personal objects —…
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"I stepped into a puddle": Non-Visual Texting in Nomadic Contexts
This study investigates the under-explored practice of texting by people who are blind and visually impaired (BVI) while navigating outdoors — what the authors term "nomadic contexts." While previous research has examined accessible text entry method…
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On the independent and sustainable mobility of people with visual impairments
This doctoral consortium extended abstract outlines a research project investigating the factors that enable or hinder independent mobility for people with blindness or visual impairments (BVI), with a particular focus on the link between mobility au…
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The State of Accessibility in Blackboard: Survey and User Reviews Case Study
This paper investigates the accessibility of the Blackboard mobile app, one of the most widely used Learning Management Systems (LMS) in higher education, through a two-pronged methodology. First, the authors conducted a large-scale survey with 1,308…
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ImageExplorer Deployment: Understanding Text-Based and Touch-Based Image Exploration in the Wild
This paper presents the real-world deployment and evaluation of ImageExplorer, an iOS application that enables blind and low-vision users to explore images through two complementary modalities: text-based sequential exploration and touch-based spatia…
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VisualAid: Enhancing Accessibility for Visually Impaired Users Through AI
This technical note presents VisualAid, an AI-powered Android application designed to help visually impaired users understand and navigate their physical surroundings. The app integrates multiple AI technologies into a single mobile interface: YOLO11…
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LLMs for Accessibility in Mobile Apps: Detection and Repair
This study evaluates the capacity of three large language models—GPT-4o, Gemini 1.0 Pro, and Llama 3—to detect, classify, and remediate accessibility violations in Android mobile applications. While prior LLM accessibility research has focused primar…