Literature Reviews

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

• Describing online videos with text-to-speech narration

  Masatomo Kobayashi, Tohru Nagano, Kentarou Fukuda, Hironobu Takagi (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from IBM Research Tokyo presents a technology platform that uses text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis to add audio descriptions (AD) to online videos at minimal cost. The system addresses the two main barriers that prevent most online video crea…

  • audio description
  • text-to-speech
  • video accessibility
  • speech synthesis
  • external metadata
  • visual impairment
  • assistive technology

• Social accessibility: the challenge of improving web accessibility through collaboration

  Daisuke Sato, Masatomo Kobayashi, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents Social Accessibility, a collaborative project from IBM Research Tokyo that enlists volunteers to fix web accessibility problems reported by visually impaired users. The system works through a three-step process: blind users encoun…

  • crowdsourcing
  • screen readers
  • alternative text
  • visual impairment
  • social computing
  • collaborative accessibility
  • external metadata

• Web 2.0: Hype or Happiness?

  Mary Zajicek (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This keynote paper by Mary Zajicek of Oxford Brookes University takes a deliberately broad, holistic view of Web 2.0 accessibility, arguing that physical access to web content is only the starting point. Zajicek defines accessibility along three dime…

  • Web 2.0
  • digital inclusion
  • older adults
  • visual impairment
  • digital divide
  • social accessibility
  • community
  • developing world
  • deafblindness

• Enabling Access to Geo-referenced Information: Atlas.txt

  Kavita E. Thomas, Livia Sumegi, Leo Ferres, Somayajulu Sripada (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the University of Aberdeen and Carleton University presents Atlas.txt, a data-to-text natural language generation (NLG) system designed to make geo-referenced data — such as census maps and thematic choropleth maps — accessible to vis…

  • natural language generation
  • visual impairment
  • data accessibility
  • geographic information
  • data visualization
  • screen readers
  • census data

• Interactive SIGHT into Information Graphics

  Seniz Demir, David Oliver, Edward Schwartz, Stephanie Elzer, Sandra Carberry, Kathleen F. McCoy (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents Interactive SIGHT (Summarizing Information GrapHics Textually), a system that provides visually impaired users with access to the high-level knowledge conveyed by bar charts in electronic documents. Unlike approaches that simply r…

  • visual impairment
  • data visualization
  • natural language generation
  • graph accessibility
  • bar charts
  • image accessibility
  • alternative text
  • Bayesian network
  • information retrieval
  • interactive dialogue
  • screen readers

• Designing Search Engine User Interfaces for the Visually Impaired

  Barbara Leporini, Patrizia Andronico, Marina Buzzi (2004) — Proceedings of the 2004 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper examines the fundamental differences between visual and aural perception of search engine interfaces and proposes specific design guidelines to improve usability for blind and visually impaired users interacting via screen readers. The aut…

  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • search engines
  • user interface design
  • web navigation
  • blindness
  • usability
  • keyboard navigation
  • aural perception
  • information retrieval

• Audio Presentation of Auto-Suggest Lists

  Andy Brown, Caroline Jay, Simon Harper (2009) — Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper investigates how to make auto-suggest lists (ASLs) — the dropdown suggestions that appear as users type in search boxes and form fields — accessible through audio for visually impaired users. Part of the SASWAT (Structured Accessibility St…

  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • Web 2.0
  • auto-suggest
  • autocomplete
  • eye tracking
  • AJAX
  • ARIA live regions
  • non-visual interaction
  • audio interface

• Audio Access to Calendars

  Andy Brown, Caroline Jay, Simon Harper (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper addresses a specific but widespread accessibility problem: pop-up calendar date pickers on the web are effectively unusable by people with visual impairments. These JavaScript widgets dynamically insert tabular calendar content into the pa…

  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • Web 2.0
  • date picker
  • audio interface
  • eye tracking
  • AJAX
  • user study
  • widget accessibility
  • non-visual interaction

• Personalizable Edge Services for Web Accessibility

  Gennaro Iaccarino, Delfina Malandrino, Vittorio Scarano (2006) — Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A): Building the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility?

  This paper presents PAN (Personalizable Accessible Navigation), a suite of proxy-based edge services that transform web pages on-the-fly to improve accessibility for users with disabilities. Built on top of the Scalable Intermediary Software Infrastr…

  • proxy-based accessibility
  • web accessibility
  • content adaptation
  • personalization
  • edge services
  • mobile accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • cognitive accessibility
  • intermediary systems

• Dialog Generation for Voice Browsing

  Zan Sun, Amanda Stent, I. V. Ramakrishnan (2006) — Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A): Building the Mobile Web: Rediscovering Accessibility?

  This paper presents HearSay, a voice browser system developed at Stony Brook University that provides speech-driven web access for people with visual disabilities. Unlike conventional screen readers that force users to arrow through a linearized, sin…

  • voice browsing
  • screen readers
  • visual impairment
  • web page segmentation
  • content summarization
  • machine learning
  • VoiceXML
  • dialog systems
  • assistive technology