Literature Reviews

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

• Interactive SIGHT Demo: Textual Summaries of Simple Bar Charts

  Seniz Demir, David Oliver, Edward Schwartz, Stephanie Elzer, Sandra Carberry, Kathleen F. McCoy (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This demonstration paper presents Interactive SIGHT, a browser extension designed to make simple bar charts found in online popular media (newspapers, magazines) accessible to people with visual impairments. The system goes beyond providing raw data …

  • information graphics
  • data visualization
  • blindness
  • screen readers
  • natural language generation
  • alternative text
  • bar charts
  • web accessibility
  • browser extension

• Monitoring Accessibility: Large Scale Evaluations at a Geo Political Level

  Silvia Mirri, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Paola Salomoni (2011) — The Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper presents AMA (Accessibility Monitoring Application), a system designed to monitor web accessibility across large collections of URLs from a geo-political perspective. Developed as part of the VaMoLà project — a collaboration between the Em…

  • web accessibility
  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • policy
  • compliance
  • governance
  • metrics
  • data visualization

• Considerations for Technology that Support Physical Activity by Older Adults

  Chloe Fan, Jodi Forlizzi, Anind Dey (2012) — Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012)

  This paper investigates how technology can help older adults overcome barriers to physical activity through a needs-based, qualitative research approach. Rather than starting from technology capabilities, the researchers interviewed 12 physically act…

  • aging
  • older adults
  • physical activity
  • technology intervention
  • participatory design
  • barriers to activity
  • persuasive technology
  • data visualization

• Comparison of Reading Accuracy between Tactile Pie Charts and Tactile Band Charts

  Kosuke Araki, Tetsuya Watanabe (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '13)

  This short paper compares the accuracy and efficiency of reading tactile pie charts versus tactile band charts for determining proportional data through touch. The authors are developing software that automatically generates tactile charts from CSV d…

  • tactile graphics
  • data visualization
  • blind users
  • braille
  • pie charts
  • band charts
  • tactile perception
  • accessible graphics
  • education

• Tracking @stemxcomet: Teaching Programming to Blind Students via 3D Printing, Crisis Management, and Twitter

  Shaun K. Kane, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2014) — ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

  This paper describes the design and execution of a four-day programming workshop for blind and visually impaired high school students, conducted as part of the National Federation of the Blind's STEM-X summer science camp. Nine students (grades 8-12)…

  • accessible programming
  • computer science education
  • blindness
  • visual impairment
  • 3D printing
  • tactile graphics
  • screen readers
  • data visualization

• Policy Maps: Tools for Guiding the Unbounded Space of LLM Behaviors

  Michelle S. Lam, Fred Hohman, Dominik Moritz, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Kenneth Holstein, Mary Beth Kery (2025) — Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '25)

  This paper introduces "policy maps," an approach to AI policy design for large language models inspired by physical mapmaking. The core insight is that comprehensive policy coverage over an unbounded space of LLM inputs and outputs is impossible — ju…

  • AI safety
  • AI policy
  • large language models
  • AI ethics
  • model evaluation
  • content moderation
  • data visualization
  • human-AI interaction
  • AI governance

• Evaluating the Accessibility of Line Graphs through Textual Summaries for Visually Impaired Users

  Priscilla Moraes, Gabriel Sina, Kathleen McCoy, Sandra Carberry (2014) — Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper presents the SIGHT (Summarizing Information GrapHics Textually) system, which automatically generates natural language summaries of line graphs found in online popular media articles such as newspapers and magazines. The system addresses a…

  • data visualization
  • natural language generation
  • information graphics
  • blindness
  • screen readers
  • alternative text
  • reading level
  • graph accessibility

• Multimodal Presentation of Two-Dimensional Charts: An Investigation Using Open Office XML and Microsoft Excel

  Iyad Abu Doush, Enrico Pontelli, Tran Cao Son, Dominic Simon, Ou Ma (2010) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents a comprehensive system for making Microsoft Excel charts accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired through multimodal haptic and audio feedback. The system extracts chart data from the OOXML format introduced in Exce…

  • haptic feedback
  • data visualization
  • screen readers
  • multimodal interaction
  • force feedback
  • charts and graphs
  • blindness

• Universal Design of Auditory Graphs: A Comparison of Sonification Mappings for Visually Impaired and Sighted Listeners

  Bruce N. Walker, Lisa M. Mauney (2010) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This study investigates whether auditory graphs—using sound to represent data for people who cannot see visual graphs—can be designed universally for both sighted and visually impaired users, or whether different sonification mappings are needed for …

  • sonification
  • auditory display
  • data visualization
  • blind users
  • visual impairment
  • universal design
  • psychophysics

• Haptic 3D Surface Representation of Table-Based Data for People With Visual Impairments

  Jonas Braier, Katharina Lattenkamp, Benjamin Räthel, Sandra Schering, Michael Wojatzki, Benjamin Weyers (2014) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper introduces "relief charts"—3D surface representations of standard data visualizations (bar graphs, pie charts, scatter plots, radar charts) designed to make complex tabular data accessible to people with visual impairments. The approach is…

  • visual impairment
  • haptic interfaces
  • data visualization
  • inclusive education
  • 3D printing
  • tactile graphics
  • blindness