Literature Reviews

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

• The Crowd Work Accessibility Problem

  Saiganesh Swaminathan, Kotaro Hara, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2017) — Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper examines a largely overlooked accessibility problem: the inaccessibility of crowdsourcing tasks themselves. While crowd work platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) offer potential employment benefits for people with disabilities — fle…

  • web accessibility evaluation
  • crowdsourcing
  • employment
  • disability employment
  • WCAG compliance
  • screen readers
  • keyboard accessibility

• Improving Usability of Math Editors

  Neil Soiffer (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This short paper presents an empirical analysis of mathematical symbol usage across US grade 6-12 textbooks to demonstrate that context-aware math editors could dramatically reduce the number of buttons needed for symbol entry, significantly improvin…

  • mathematics accessibility
  • STEM accessibility
  • MathML
  • equation editors
  • screen readers
  • switch access
  • universal design
  • keyboard accessibility
  • visual impairment

• Parallel DOM Architecture for Accessible Interactive Simulations

  Taliesin L. Smith, Jesse Greenberg, Sam Reid, Emily B. Moore (2018) — Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This paper presents the Parallel DOM (PDOM) architecture developed by the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder to make their suite of 140+ free science and mathematics simulations accessible to students with visu…

  • web accessibility
  • interactive simulations
  • screen readers
  • keyboard accessibility
  • WAI-ARIA
  • STEM accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • PhET
  • DOM
  • scene graph
  • alternative input

• Non-Visual Beats: Redesigning the Groove Pizza

  William Payne, Alex Xu, Amy Hurst, S. Alex Ruthmann (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper describes the accessible redesign of the Groove Pizza, a popular free web-based drum step-sequencer developed by NYU’s Music Experience Design Lab (MusEDLab) that reaches thousands of users per month. The original Groove Pizz…

  • music accessibility
  • blind
  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • sonification
  • keyboard accessibility
  • music creation
  • web accessibility
  • universal design

• AudioFunctions.web: Multimodal Exploration of Mathematical Function Graphs

  Dragan Ahmetovic, Cristian Bernareggi, João Guerreiro, Sergio Mascetti, Anna Capietto (2019) — Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This full research paper presents AudioFunctions.web, a web application that enables blind and visually impaired people to explore mathematical function graphs through a combination of sonification, earcons, and speech synthesis. The system is the pl…

  • sonification
  • mathematics accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • blindness
  • STEM accessibility
  • multimodal interaction
  • data visualization
  • assistive technology
  • web accessibility
  • user study
  • touchscreen
  • keyboard accessibility

• Distance Meetings During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Are Video Conferencing Tools Accessible for Blind People?

  Barbara Leporini, Marina Buzzi, Marion Hersh (2021) — Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper evaluates the accessibility of three major video conferencing platforms — Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams — for blind users who rely on screen readers and keyboard navigation. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic when video confer…

  • screen readers
  • video conferencing
  • blind and low vision
  • keyboard accessibility
  • COVID-19
  • remote work
  • usability

• Teaching Accessibility Awareness with Games

  Greg Gay (2021) — Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents the Accessibility Maze, a web-based serious game developed at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) to teach web accessibility basics through experiential learning. The game was designed with three goals: provid…

  • education accessibility
  • game accessibility
  • web accessibility
  • screen readers
  • keyboard accessibility
  • ARIA
  • training

• Accessibility Challenges in Lab Simulations

  Matthew Ralston, Greg Gay (2021) — Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper describes the accessibility challenges encountered and solutions developed when creating online lab simulations for an Occupational Health and Safety course at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University). The COVID-19 pandemic…

  • education accessibility
  • online learning
  • keyboard accessibility
  • screen reader accessibility
  • ARIA
  • web accessibility
  • simulations

• Challenges and Opportunities in Creating an Accessible Web Application for Learning Organic Chemistry

  Allyson Grace Yu (2022) — Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22)

  This paper investigates the accessibility challenges of creating web-based educational tools for organic chemistry, a STEM subject that relies heavily on visual 2D and 3D molecular representations. The author notes that while 19.8% of undergraduate s…

  • STEM accessibility
  • STEM education
  • web accessibility
  • organic chemistry
  • keyboard accessibility
  • usability testing
  • accessibility audit
  • device-dependent event handlers
  • 3D interaction