Literature Reviews

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

• Automatic Generation and Evaluation of Usable and Secure Audio reCAPTCHA

  Mohit Jain, Rohun Tripathi, Ishita Bhansali, Pratyush Kumar (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper presents reCAPGen, a system that automatically generates usable and secure audio CAPTCHAs by leveraging the gap between human and machine speech recognition abilities. Visual CAPTCHAs — the dominant form of online human verification — are …

  • CAPTCHA
  • audio accessibility
  • blind
  • visual impairment
  • web accessibility
  • speech recognition
  • security
  • crowdsourcing
  • screen readers

• Reading Between the Guidelines: How Commercial Voice Assistant Guidelines Hinder Accessibility for Blind Users

  Stacy M. Branham, Antony Rishin Mukkath Roy (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper presents a qualitative document review of public-facing voice assistant design guidelines published by five leading commercial vendors — Amazon (Alexa), Google (Google Assistant), Microsoft (Cortana), Apple (Siri), and Alibaba (Xiao AI) — …

  • voice assistant
  • blind
  • visual impairment
  • conversational user interfaces
  • design guidelines
  • Alexa
  • Siri
  • Google Assistant
  • screen readers
  • accessibility barriers

• Non-Visual Beats: Redesigning the Groove Pizza

  William Payne, Alex Xu, Amy Hurst, S. Alex Ruthmann (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper describes the accessible redesign of the Groove Pizza, a popular free web-based drum step-sequencer developed by NYU’s Music Experience Design Lab (MusEDLab) that reaches thousands of users per month. The original Groove Pizz…

  • music accessibility
  • blind
  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • sonification
  • keyboard accessibility
  • music creation
  • web accessibility
  • universal design

• GoDonnie: A Robot Programming Language to Improve Orientation and Mobility Skills in People Who are Visually Impaired

  Juliana Damasio Oliveira, Márcia de Borba Campos, Alexandre Amory, Rafael H. Bordini (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper presents GoDonnie, a text-based programming language designed to help people who are visually impaired (PVI) develop both computational thinking and orientation and mobility (O&M) skills simultaneously. GoDonnie is based on L…

  • orientation and mobility
  • visual impairment
  • programming education
  • robotics
  • screen readers
  • STEM accessibility
  • spatial cognition
  • computational thinking
  • blind

• Disability, ICT and eLearning Platforms: Faculty-Facing Embedded Work Tools in Learning Management Systems

  Sushil K. Oswal (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper presents preliminary findings from a longitudinal study of the accessibility of the Canvas learning management system (LMS) for faculty with visual disabilities. What makes this study distinctive is its focus on the faculty-facing interfac…

  • learning management systems
  • higher education
  • screen readers
  • visual impairment
  • faculty accessibility
  • Canvas LMS
  • participatory design
  • ableism
  • workplace accessibility

• The Design Space of Nonvisual Word Completion

  Hugo Nicolau, Andre Rodrigues, Andre Santos, Tiago Guerreiro, Kyle Montague, Joao Guerreiro (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper presents the first design space for nonvisual word completion on mobile devices, addressing a gap where word completion interfaces — ubiquitous in sighted mobile typing — remain poorly designed for screen reader users. While sighted users …

  • blindness
  • text entry
  • mobile accessibility
  • screen readers
  • word prediction
  • touchscreen
  • design space
  • participatory design

• X-Ray: Screenshot Accessibility via Embedded Metadata

  Sujeath Pareddy, Anhong Guo, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper introduces X-Ray, a system that preserves the accessibility of user interface content when it is captured as a screenshot. Screenshots strip away all semantic information — text structure, element roles, states, labels, and navigation orde…

  • screen readers
  • alternative text
  • screenshots
  • image accessibility
  • metadata
  • document accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • social media accessibility

• Making the Blockly Library Accessible via Touchscreen

  Logan B. Caraco, Sebastian Deibel, Yufan Ma, Lauren R. Milne (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper presents two prototype designs for making Google's Blockly library — the foundation underlying popular block-based programming environments (BBPEs) like Scratch, MIT App Inventor, and the Code.org curriculum — accessible to u…

  • visual impairment
  • block-based programming
  • education
  • screen readers
  • ARIA
  • touchscreen accessibility
  • K-12 education
  • coding education

• Web-ALAP: A Web-based LaTeX Editor for Blind Individuals

  Safa Arooj, Shaban Zulfiqar, Muhammad Qasim Hunain, Suleman Shahid, Asim Karim (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '20)

  This paper presents Web-ALAP (Web-Accessible LaTeX-based Authoring and Presentation), an open-source, web-based LaTeX editor designed specifically for blind and visually impaired users. The system addresses a critical gap in STEM accessibility: while…

  • blindness
  • STEM accessibility
  • mathematics accessibility
  • screen readers
  • web accessibility
  • text-to-speech
  • education accessibility

• How Blind and Visually Impaired Composers, Producers, and Songwriters Leverage and Adapt Music Technology

  William Christopher Payne, Alex Yixuan Xu, Fabiha Ahmed, Lisa Ye, Amy Hurst (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '20)

  This qualitative interview study explores how 11 blind and visually impaired music creators — composers, producers, and songwriters — use and adapt mainstream and assistive music technologies to achieve their creative goals. The researchers recruited…

  • blindness
  • music accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • screen readers
  • creative accessibility
  • inclusive design
  • braille music