Literature Reviews — A11y Paradise

WeAllWalk: An Annotated Dataset of Inertial Sensor Time Series from Blind Walkers

Germán H. Flores, Roberto Manduchi (2018) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

This paper introduces WeAllWalk, an annotated dataset of inertial sensor time series collected from blind and sighted walkers navigating complex indoor routes. Ten blind volunteers (seven using a long cane, one using a guide dog, and two alternating …

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 …

NavCog3 in the Wild: Large-scale Blind Indoor Navigation Assistant with Semantic Features

Daisuke Sato, Uran Oh, João Guerreiro, Dragan Ahmetovic, Kakuya Naito, Hironobu Takagi, Kris M. Kitani, Chieko Asakawa (2019) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

This paper presents NavCog3, a smartphone-based indoor navigation assistant for people with visual impairments that combines high-accuracy Bluetooth beacon localization with rich semantic environmental features. The system uses off-the-shelf BLE beac…

Blind Leading the Sighted: Drawing Design Insights from Blind Users towards More Productivity-oriented Voice Interfaces

Ali Abdolrahmani, Kevin M. Storer, Antony Rishin Mukkath Roy, Ravi Kuber, Stacy M. Branham (2020) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

This paper investigates how people who are blind use voice-activated personal assistants (VAPAs) like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Siri, arguing that blind users are expert voice interface users whose insights can improve VAPA design for…

Deep Learning Compensation of Rotation Errors During Navigation Assistance for People with Visual Impairments or Blindness

Dragan Ahmetovic, Sergio Mascetti, Cristian Bernareggi, João Guerreiro, Uran Oh, Chieko Asakawa (2019) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

This paper addresses a critical but often overlooked problem in turn-by-turn navigation assistance for people with visual impairments or blindness (VIB): rotation errors at turning points. While much navigation research focuses on improving localizat…

Speed-of-Light VR for Blind People: Conveying the Location of Arm-Reach Targets

Diogo Lança, Manuel Piçarra, Inês Gonçalves, Uran Oh, André Rodrigues, João Guerreiro (2024) — Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2024)

This paper explores how blind people can locate and interact with close-range virtual objects in Virtual Reality (VR), a space that relies almost entirely on visual cues. Researchers from the University of Lisbon and Ewha Womans University adapted th…