Literature Reviews

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

• Authoring accessible media content on social networks

  Letícia Seixas Pereira, José Coelho, André Rodrigues, João Guerreiro, Tiago Guerreiro, Carlos Duarte (2022) — Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22)

  This paper investigates why user-generated visual content on social media remains overwhelmingly inaccessible to blind and visually impaired users, despite platforms offering tools to add alternative descriptions. The researchers conducted a two-phas…

  • social media accessibility
  • alt text
  • user-generated content
  • image descriptions
  • digital inclusion
  • content authoring

• AutoChemplete - Making Chemical Structural Formulas Accessible

  Merlin Knaeble, Gabriel Sailer, Zihan Chen, Thorsten Schwarz, Kailun Yang, Mario Nadj, Rainer Stiefelhagen, Alexander Maedche (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents AutoChemplete, an interactive labeling tool that makes chemical structural formulas accessible to blind and low-vision (BLV) students. Chemical structural formulas — visual diagrams showing atoms, bonds, and molecular geometry — a…

  • STEM accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • chemistry
  • machine learning
  • interactive labeling
  • document accessibility
  • alt text
  • tactile graphics

• Evaluating the Effectiveness of STEM Images Captioning

  Maurizio Leotta, Marina Ribaudo (2024) — Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A '24)

  This paper from the University of Genoa reports on an experiment comparing human-written and AI-generated alternative text descriptions for complex STEM images — graphs, diagrams, scientific illustrations, and mathematical figures. The researchers re…

  • alt text
  • image accessibility
  • STEM accessibility
  • AI captioning
  • computer science education
  • visual language models

• Increasing Agency of Screen-Reader Users in Consuming Information From Online Data Visualizations

  Ather Sharif, Andrew Zhang, Jacob Wobbrock (2025) — Proceedings of the 22nd International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper addresses a fundamental equity problem in data visualization accessibility: screen-reader users are limited to consuming only the information that visualization creators choose to provide, with no agency to customize what they hear. Prior …

  • data visualization accessibility
  • screen readers
  • user agency
  • sonification
  • alt text
  • data tables
  • customization
  • blind users

• Accessmonkey: Enabling and Sharing End User Accessibility Improvements

  Jeffrey P. Bigham (2007) — SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing

  This paper proposes the Accessmonkey Framework, a collaborative platform for creating, sharing, and applying user-generated web accessibility improvements. The system addresses the reality that blind users frequently encounter inaccessible web conten…

  • web accessibility
  • screen reader
  • browser extension
  • crowdsourcing
  • user scripting
  • ARIA
  • alt text
  • semantic HTML

• 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

• Context-Aware Image Descriptions for Web Accessibility

  Ananya Gubbi Mohanbabu, Amy Pavel (2024) — Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '24)

  This paper addresses a fundamental limitation of current AI-generated image descriptions: they describe images in isolation without considering the surrounding webpage context. When blind and low-vision (BLV) users encounter images on the web, what t…

  • alt text
  • image descriptions
  • blind and low vision
  • artificial intelligence
  • large language models
  • web accessibility
  • screen readers