Literature Reviews

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

• Visually Augmented Audio-Tactile Graphics for Visually Impaired People

  Timo Götzelmann (2018) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper presents a novel system for creating visually augmented audio-tactile graphics using 3D printing and standard tablet computers, designed for people with visual impairments including those with residual vision. Traditional tactile graphics …

  • tactile graphics
  • 3D printing
  • audio-tactile
  • visual augmentation
  • low vision
  • blindness
  • capacitive markers
  • tablet computer
  • tangible interaction
  • multimodal
  • maps

• Effects of Extended Use of an Age-friendly Computer System on Assessments of Computer Proficiency, Attitudes, and Usability by Older Non-Computer Users

  Joseph Sharit, Jerad H. Moxley, Walter R. Boot, Neil Charness, Wendy A. Rogers, Sara J. Czaja (2019) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper examines the impact of 12 months of extended use of PRISM (Personal Reminder Information and Social Management), a computer system specifically designed for older adults at risk of social isolation, on computer proficiency, attitudes towar…

  • older adults
  • computer proficiency
  • social isolation
  • usability
  • age-friendly design
  • technology adoption
  • digital divide
  • longitudinal study
  • cognitive abilities

• Making Emergency Calls More Accessible to Older Adults Through a Hands-free Speech Interface in the House

  Michel Vacher, Frédéric Aman, Solange Rossato, François Portet, Benjamin Lecouteux (2019) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper presents CirdoX, a hands-free voice user interface system designed to detect emergency calls for help from older adults living alone at home. Wearable personal emergency response (PER) systems — typically pendant buttons worn on the neck o…

  • speech recognition
  • aging
  • emergency response
  • ambient assisted living
  • smart home
  • voice user interface
  • older adults
  • hands-free interaction
  • fall detection

• Predicting the Understandability of Imperfect English Captions for People Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

  Sushant Kafle, Matt Huenerfauth (2019) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper tackles a fundamental measurement problem in ASR-based captioning for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) users: the standard Word Error Rate (WER) metric has little correlation with how DHH users actually perceive caption quality. WER treats a…

  • automatic speech recognition
  • captioning
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • evaluation metrics
  • word error rate
  • caption quality
  • word importance
  • semantic distance
  • NLP

• Tradeoffs in the Efficient Detection of Sign Language Content in Video Sharing Sites

  Caio D. D. Monteiro, Frank M. Shipman, Satyakiran Duggina, Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna (2019) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper addresses the problem of finding sign language (SL) content on video sharing sites like YouTube, where such videos serve as de-facto digital libraries of Deaf community knowledge, experiences, and culture. Metadata-based search is inadequa…

  • sign language
  • video analysis
  • content detection
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • computer vision
  • information retrieval
  • digital library
  • ASL
  • cascading classifier

• Artificial Intelligence Fairness in the Context of Accessibility Research on Intelligent Systems for People Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

  Sushant Kafle, Abraham Glasser, Sedeeq Al-khazraji, Larwan Berke, Matthew Seita, Matt Huenerfauth (2020) — SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing

  This paper from RIT's Center for Accessibility and Inclusion Research discusses AI fairness issues specifically through the lens of the authors' extensive research on intelligent systems for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH). The authors i…

  • AI fairness
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • automatic speech recognition
  • captioning
  • evaluation metrics
  • sign language avatars
  • ethical responsibility
  • human-AI interaction
  • behavioral change

• What Is the Point of Fairness? Disability, AI and the Complexity of Justice

  Cynthia L. Bennett, Os Keyes (2020) — SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing

  This paper offers a critical disability studies challenge to the dominant "fairness" framing of AI ethics, arguing that fairness is insufficient and potentially harmful when applied to disability, and that justice must be centred instead. Drawing on …

  • AI fairness
  • disability justice
  • critical disability studies
  • computer vision
  • autism diagnosis
  • surveillance
  • medicalization
  • intersectionality
  • structural oppression

• Unintended Machine Learning Biases as Social Barriers for Persons with Disabilities

  Ben Hutchinson, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, Remi Denton, Kellie Webster, Yu Zhong, Stephen Denuyl (2020) — SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing

  This paper from Google's Ethical AI team provides concrete empirical evidence that widely deployed NLP models encode measurable biases against people with disabilities, creating social barriers through technology. The authors examine three layers of …

  • machine learning bias
  • NLP
  • toxicity detection
  • sentiment analysis
  • disability representation
  • content moderation
  • BERT
  • word embeddings
  • social barriers
  • stereotyping

• Preliminary Results from a Survey to Measure the Benefits of Accessibility and Universal Design Topics in Course Curricula

  Howard Kramer (2020) — SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing

  This paper presents preliminary findings from a national survey conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder as part of the Promoting the Integration of Universal Design into University Curricula (UDUC) project. The 24-question survey was distribu…

  • accessibility education
  • universal design
  • curriculum
  • higher education
  • career benefits
  • survey
  • computer science education

• Accessibility Information Needs in the Enterprise

  Sharon Snider, Willie L. Scott II, Shari Trewin (2020) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper from IBM presents the first empirical analysis of accessibility information needs within a large multinational enterprise, analyzing 439 unique accessibility questions and 362 unique keywords gathered over two years from FAQs, support chan…

  • enterprise accessibility
  • ontology
  • knowledge management
  • accessibility conformance
  • chatbot
  • question answering
  • WCAG
  • Section 508
  • accessibility testing
  • organizational accessibility