Literature Reviews

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

• A Case for Making Web Accessibility Guidelines Accessible: Older Adult Content Creators and Web Accessibility Planning

  Aqueasha Martin-Hammond, Ulka Patil, Barsa Tandukar (2021) — Proceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '21)

  This short paper presents an experience report on partnering with older adult content creators at an independent living community to support web accessibility planning for their internal resident website. The website served as a civic participation t…

  • web accessibility
  • older adults
  • content creators
  • WCAG
  • participatory research
  • digital literacy
  • PDF accessibility
  • aging

• Accessible PDFs: Applying Artificial Intelligence for Automated Remediation of STEM PDFs

  Felix M. Schmitt-Koopmann, Elaine M. Huang, Alireza Darvishy (2022) — Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2022)

  This Ph.D. research paper presents a plan to leverage artificial intelligence to automate the remediation of PDF documents from STEM fields, addressing one of the most significant barriers to information access for people with visual impairments. The…

  • PDF accessibility
  • document remediation
  • artificial intelligence
  • STEM accessibility
  • mathematical formulae
  • screen readers
  • document analysis
  • deep learning
  • assistive technology

• Math-to-Speech Effectiveness and Appreciation for People with Developmental Learning Disorders

  Chiara Magosso, Dragan Ahmetovic, Tiziana Armano, Cristian Bernareggi, Sandro Coriasco, Adriano Sofia, Luisa Testa, Anna Capietto (2022) — Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2022)

  This short paper presents a user study with 19 Italian university students who have Developmental Learning Disorders (DLD), examining whether text-to-speech (TTS) access to mathematical formulae improves their ability to memorize math syntax and thei…

  • developmental learning disorders
  • text-to-speech
  • mathematics accessibility
  • dyscalculia
  • dyslexia
  • STEM accessibility
  • PDF accessibility

• A11yPDF: Bridging the Gap to Inclusive PDFs

  Wajdi Aljedaani, Sandeep Kumar Rudhravaram, Akhila Chintham, Abdulrahman Habib, Marcelo M. Eler (2024) — Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This technical note introduces A11yPDF, a free web-based tool for evaluating the accessibility of PDF documents against WCAG 2.2 guidelines. The tool addresses key limitations of existing PDF accessibility checkers such as PDFA Inspector, PAVE, ABBYY…

  • PDF accessibility
  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • document accessibility
  • WCAG
  • tools

• Accessible workplace, inaccessible workflows: mandatory documents, challenges and workarounds in accessible onboarding

  Scott Hollier, Justin Brown, Ruchi Permvattana (2025) — Proceedings of the 22nd International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This short paper presents a lived-experience case study from the Centre For Accessibility Australia (CFAA), a not-for-profit accessibility auditing organization where 9 of 12 staff have lived experience of disability, including the legally blind dire…

  • PDF accessibility
  • workplace accessibility
  • government forms
  • screen readers
  • document accessibility
  • lived experience
  • onboarding

• Benchmarking PDF Accessibility Evaluation: A Dataset and Framework for Assessing Automated and LLM-Based Approaches for Accessibility Testing

  Anukriti Kumar, Tanushree Padath, Lucy Lu Wang (2025) — ASSETS 2025: 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper addresses a critical gap in PDF accessibility evaluation by introducing the first expert-validated benchmark dataset and standardized evaluation framework for assessing how well different tools and approaches can evaluate PDF accessibility…

  • PDF accessibility
  • automated testing
  • large language models
  • WCAG
  • PDF/UA
  • benchmark dataset
  • document accessibility
  • alternative text
  • reading order
  • semantic tagging
  • accessibility evaluation

• Uncovering the New Accessibility Crisis in Scholarly PDFs: Publishing Model and Platform Changes Contribute to Declining Scholarly Document Accessibility in the Last Decade

  Anukriti Kumar, Lucy Lu Wang (2024) — ASSETS '24: Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper presents a large-scale analysis of 20,000 scholarly PDFs published between 2014 and 2023 to characterise the scope and trajectory of document accessibility in academic publishing. Most scholarly works are distributed as PDFs, a format that…

  • PDF accessibility
  • scholarly publishing
  • document accessibility
  • screen readers
  • tagged PDF
  • alt text
  • open access
  • automated testing
  • large-scale analysis