Literature Reviews
Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.
166 results found tagged blind and low vision.
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"It's trained by non-disabled people": Evaluating How Image Quality Affects Product Captioning with Vision-Language Models
Garg and colleagues investigate how well Vision-Language Models (VLMs) caption product images taken by blind and low-vision (BLV) people — a high-stakes everyday task that increasingly depends on tools like Be My AI, Microsoft Seeing AI, and general-…
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Are You Comfortable Sharing It?: Leveraging Image Obfuscation Techniques to Enhance Sharing Privacy for Blind and Visually Impaired Users
This CHI 2026 paper addresses a privacy gap in how blind and visually impaired (BVI) users share photos: because they cannot visually inspect what they capture, images routinely contain sensitive or inappropriate content (identifiable people, nudity,…
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Towards LLM-powered Assistive Drone for Blind and Low Vision Users
Wei and colleagues built and evaluated a voice-based assistive drone prototype for blind and low-vision (BLV) users that leverages GPT-4o in two stages: generating step-by-step Python drone-control code from natural-language commands, and interpretin…
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Beyond Descriptions: A Generative Scene2Audio Framework for Blind and Low-Vision Users to Experience Vista Landscapes
Scene description apps (Seeing AI, Be My AI, Envision) do a reasonable job of telling blind and low-vision (BLV) users what is in front of them, but they are built for utility - 'there is a chair'. They fail at the aesthetic, leisure, emotional exper…
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Lost in Instructions: Study of Blind Users' Experiences with DIY Manuals and AI-Rewritten Instructions for Assembly, Operation, and Troubleshooting of Tangible Products
Blind users increasingly reach for AI tools like Be My AI (Be My Eyes' GPT-4-powered assistant) and ChatGPT to interpret the printed and PDF product manuals that accompany consumer goods - flat-pack furniture, alarm clocks, timers, ring lights, smart…
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From Selfie Stick to Virtual Cane: Enabling Blind Exploration through Mobile Virtual Reality
Consumer VR is a visual-first medium, which in practice shuts out blind and low-vision (BLV) users. Tang and colleagues argue that existing accessible VR systems do help BLV users explore virtual environments (VEs), but they depend on head-mounted di…
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"I Don't Trust Any Professional Research Tool": A Re-Imagination of Knowledge Production Workflows by, with, and for Blind and Low-Vision Researchers
This CHI 2026 paper is an autoethnographically-grounded, mixed-methods study of how blind and low-vision (BLV) researchers actually do research inside an ecosystem of tools built with sighted workflows in mind. Written by two BLV researchers (one tot…
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Contextual Scaffolding and Self-Efficacy: Supporting Computer Skill Development among Blind Learners in India
This paper presents a four-month contextual inquiry at two Indian computer training centers serving 94 blind or visually impaired (BVI) students — one urban center in Bengaluru focused on job-oriented ICT training (KEONICS certification) and one rura…
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GeoVisA11y: An AI-based Geovisualization Question-Answering System for Screen-Reader Users
This CHI 2026 paper tackles a long-neglected corner of accessible data visualization: geovisualizations — choropleth maps, dot density maps, and similar spatially encoded displays that pack demographic, environmental, and public-health information in…
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Augmenting Imagery with Multimodal Vibrotactile Representations: Touch, Feel, and Hear
This CHI 2026 paper addresses a long-standing gap in image accessibility for blind and visually impaired (BVI) users: while alt text, sonification, tactile graphics, and refreshable Braille displays convey shape, layout, and identity, they rarely com…