Literature Reviews

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

• Automating Tactile Graphics Translation

  Richard E. Ladner, Melody Y. Ivory, Rajesh Rao, Sheryl Burgstahler, Dan Comden, Sangyun Hahn, Matthew Renzelmann, Satria Krisnandi, Mahalakshmi Ramasamy, Beverly Slabosky, Andrew Martin, Amelia Lacenski, Stuart Olsen, Dmitri Groce (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper addresses the critical shortage of tactile graphics available to blind students in mathematics, science, and engineering (MSE) courses. Postsecondary science textbooks may have images on half their pages — sometimes up to 500 images per bo…

  • tactile graphics
  • braille
  • STEM accessibility
  • image processing
  • machine learning
  • visual impairment
  • assistive technology
  • automation
  • accessible publishing

• A Gesture Recognition Architecture for Sign Language

  Annelies Braffort (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper from LIMSI-CNRS in France presents a gesture recognition architecture specifically designed for sign languages, grounded in a detailed linguistic analysis of French Sign Language (LSF). The key insight is that sign languages differ fundame…

  • sign language
  • gesture recognition
  • French Sign Language
  • data glove
  • sign language recognition
  • machine learning
  • Hidden Markov Model
  • deaf accessibility
  • linguistics

• A Camera Phone Based Currency Reader for the Visually Impaired

  Xu Liu (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a camera phone-based system for identifying U.S. paper currency denominations for people who are blind or visually impaired. The work addresses a specific accessibility gap: unlike currencies in many other countries, U.S. paper bi…

  • visual impairment
  • computer vision
  • assistive technology
  • mobile accessibility
  • object recognition
  • financial accessibility
  • machine learning
  • independent living

• Spatial and Temporal Pyramids for Grammatical Expression Recognition of American Sign Language

  Nicholas Michael, Dimitris Metaxas, Carol Neidle (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents a novel computer vision framework for recognizing grammatical facial expressions and head gestures in American Sign Language (ASL) video. While most sign language recognition research has focused on manual components (hand shapes …

  • sign language recognition
  • American Sign Language
  • non-manual markers
  • computer vision
  • facial expression recognition
  • machine learning
  • deaf accessibility

• Modeling and Synthesizing Spatially Inflected Verbs for American Sign Language Animations

  Matt Huenerfauth, Pengfei Lu (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper presents a novel computational method for automatically synthesizing animations of American Sign Language (ASL) verbs that undergo spatial inflection — a grammatical process where verb motion paths change based on the 3D locations in space…

  • American Sign Language
  • sign language animation
  • deaf accessibility
  • natural language generation
  • avatar
  • spatial inflection
  • machine learning
  • computer animation

• Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance Help (NOAH) for Older Adults with Cognitive Impairment: A Pilot Study

  Pooja Viswanathan, James J. Little, Alan K. Mackworth, Alex Mihailidis (2011) — The Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This paper describes NOAH (Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance Help), an intelligent powered wheelchair system designed to provide adaptive navigation assistance to older adults with cognitive impairment in long-term care settings. An estimated 60-80% …

  • intelligent wheelchair
  • dementia
  • cognitive impairment
  • collision avoidance
  • wayfinding
  • computer vision
  • older adults
  • assistive technology
  • machine learning
  • long-term care

• Design and Evaluation of Classifier for Identifying Sign Language Videos in Video Sharing Sites

  Caio D.D. Monteiro, Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna, Frank M. Shipman (2012) — Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012)

  This paper presents the design and evaluation of a video classifier that automatically distinguishes sign language (SL) videos from non-sign-language videos on video sharing sites like YouTube. Currently, deaf and hard-of-hearing users must rely on t…

  • sign language
  • deaf community
  • video classification
  • computer vision
  • machine learning
  • SVM
  • video sharing
  • YouTube
  • ASL
  • British Sign Language
  • content discovery

• Hunting for Headings: Sighted Labeling vs. Automatic Classification of Headings

  Jeremy T. Brudvik, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Anna C. Cavender, Richard E. Ladner (2008) — Assets '08: Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper investigates the problem of missing heading markup in web pages — a significant accessibility barrier for blind screen reader users who rely on heading navigation (h1-h6 tags) to quickly skip through page content rather than reading linear…

  • web accessibility
  • headings
  • screen readers
  • machine learning
  • semantic HTML
  • blind users
  • automated accessibility repair

• Real-Time Crowd Labeling for Deployable Activity Recognition

  Walter S. Lasecki, Young Chol Song, Henry Kautz, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2013) — Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2013)

  Legion:AR is a system that provides deployable activity recognition by combining real-time crowd labeling with automatic recognition using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The system addresses a critical limitation of current activity recognition: automa…

  • activity recognition
  • crowdsourcing
  • human computation
  • machine learning
  • aging in place
  • cognitive accessibility
  • smart environments
  • privacy
  • assistive technology

• Increasing Web Accessibility by Automatically Judging Alternative Text Quality

  Jeffrey P. Bigham (2007) — Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2007)

  This paper presents a machine learning classifier that can automatically judge whether alternative text assigned to web images is appropriate or inappropriate, using contextual features rather than visual analysis of the image itself. The research ad…

  • alternative text
  • web accessibility
  • machine learning
  • screen readers
  • automated testing
  • image accessibility
  • blind and low vision