Literature Reviews

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

• Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Users Evaluating Designs for Highlighting Key Words in Educational Lecture Videos

  Sushant Kafle, Becca Dingman, Matt Huenerfauth (2021) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This empirical study investigates design preferences for keyword highlighting in video captions among Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) users. While style guides like the APA Publication Manual and Chicago Manual of Style provide recommendations for hig…

  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • captions
  • captioning
  • video accessibility
  • text highlighting
  • educational accessibility
  • user study

• Machine Generation of Audio Description for Blind and Visually Impaired People

  Virgínia P. Campos, Tiago M. U. de Araújo, Guido L. de Souza Filho, Luiz M. G. Gonçalves (2023) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents an extension to CineAD, a system for automatically generating audio descriptions (AD) for videos. The authors address a critical accessibility gap: most videos, films, and cultural programming lack audio descriptions, leaving blin…

  • audio description
  • blind and visually impaired
  • computer vision
  • machine learning
  • video accessibility
  • text-to-speech
  • object detection
  • automation

• Online News Videos: The UX of Subtitle Position

  Michael Crabb, Rhianne Jones, Mike Armstrong, Chris J. Hughes (2015) — ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This BBC-funded research investigates whether repositioning subtitles from their traditional placement within a video to below the video frame improves user experience for online news content. The study addresses a gap in captioning research: while t…

  • subtitles
  • captions
  • deaf accessibility
  • user experience
  • video accessibility
  • personalization
  • online media
  • web video
  • hearing impairment

• Closed ASL Interpreting for Online Videos

  Matthew Seita (2016) — ASSETS '16: Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper introduces "closed interpreting"—a concept analogous to closed captions where an ASL interpreter video can be toggled on and customized alongside online video content. The motivation is straightforward but often overlooked: many deaf and h…

  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • American Sign Language
  • video accessibility
  • closed interpreting
  • multimedia accessibility
  • sign language interpreter
  • online learning

• Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs for Detecting Sign Language Content in Video Sharing Sites

  Frank M. Shipman, Satyakiran Duggina, Caio D.D. Monteiro, Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna (2017) — Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper addresses the problem of automatically detecting sign language content in videos on sharing platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. For many deaf and hard-of-hearing people, sign language is their primary communication medium, and they rely on o…

  • sign language
  • computer vision
  • video classification
  • information retrieval
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • machine learning
  • video accessibility
  • content detection

• Making Multimedia Content Accessible for Screen Reader Users

  Hisashi Miyashita, Daisuke Sato, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from IBM Research Tokyo describes an accessible multimedia browser designed to address three critical barriers blind users face with web multimedia content. The first problem is audio conflict: when media plays on a page, its sound masks t…

  • multimedia accessibility
  • screen readers
  • blind users
  • audio description
  • video accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • dynamic content
  • Flash
  • streaming media
  • keyboard accessibility

• Accessibility for the HTML5 <video> element

  Silvia Pfeiffer, Conrad Parker (2009) — Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)

  This paper documents early efforts to standardize how subtitles, captions, and other accessibility data should be associated with the then-new HTML5 <video> element. Written in 2009 when Firefox, Opera, and Safari were just beginning to implement <vi…

  • video accessibility
  • HTML5
  • captioning
  • subtitles
  • web standards
  • timed text
  • open source
  • Ogg

• Describing online videos with text-to-speech narration

  Masatomo Kobayashi, Tohru Nagano, Kentarou Fukuda, Hironobu Takagi (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from IBM Research Tokyo presents a technology platform that uses text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis to add audio descriptions (AD) to online videos at minimal cost. The system addresses the two main barriers that prevent most online video crea…

  • audio description
  • text-to-speech
  • video accessibility
  • speech synthesis
  • external metadata
  • visual impairment
  • assistive technology

• Towards collaborative annotation for video accessibility

  Pierre-Antoine Champin, Benoît Encelle, Nicholas W. D. Evans, Magali O.-Beldame, Yannick Prié, Raphaël Troncy (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents the ACAV (Collaborative Annotation for Video Accessibility) project, a French research initiative involving Dailymotion, the University of Lyon (LIRIS), and EURECOM, aimed at making web video accessible to blind and deaf users thr…

  • video accessibility
  • audio description
  • captioning
  • crowdsourcing
  • speech recognition
  • Braille
  • multimodal interaction
  • semantic web
  • collaborative annotation

• Crowdsourcing Correction of Speech Recognition Captioning Errors

  M. Wald (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper describes tools built around Synote, an award-winning web-based application from the University of Southampton, that enable crowdsourced correction of automatic speech recognition (ASR) captioning errors to make video content accessible at…

  • captioning
  • speech recognition
  • crowdsourcing
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • video accessibility
  • education accessibility
  • automatic speech recognition