Literature Reviews

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

• Automatic accessibility transcoding for flash content

  Daisuke Sato, Hisashi Miyashita, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This 2007 paper from IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory tackles a problem that was acute during the height of the Flash era: the near-total inaccessibility of Flash content to screen reader users. Although Flash had an accessibility framework built on M…

  • flash
  • transcoding
  • automatic repair
  • screen readers
  • alternative text
  • visual impairment
  • assistive technology
  • web accessibility
  • MSAA

• Improving Accessibility of HTML Documents by Generating Image-Tags in a Proxy

  Daniel Keysers, Marius Renn, Thomas M. Breuel (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and Technical University Kaiserslautern presents a system that automatically generates ALT tags for images on web pages by analysing image contents through a web proxy. The…

  • automatic alt text
  • image accessibility
  • web accessibility
  • computer vision
  • image retrieval
  • web proxy
  • content-based image retrieval
  • screen readers
  • machine learning

• SADIe: Transcoding Based on CSS

  Simon Harper, Sean Bechhofer, Darren Lunn (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper introduces SADIe (Structural-Semantics for Accessibility and Device Independence), a system that improves web accessibility for visually impaired users by leveraging semantic information already encoded in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The…

  • visual impairment
  • web accessibility
  • transcoding
  • CSS
  • screen readers
  • semantic web
  • document engineering

• A Flexible VXML Interpreter for Non-Visual Web Access

  Yevgen Borodin (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This doctoral consortium paper from Stony Brook University presents VXMLSurf, an open-source VoiceXML interpreter being developed as part of the HearSay project for non-visual web browsing. VoiceXML is the W3C standard for specifying interactive voic…

  • VoiceXML
  • non-visual browsing
  • voice browser
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • speech recognition
  • web accessibility
  • open source

• Determining the Impact of Computer Frustration on the Mood of Blind Users Browsing the Web

  Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Feng, Aaron Allen (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper from Towson University's Universal Usability Laboratory examines how computer frustration affects the mood of 100 blind web users — the first study to investigate the emotional impact of frustrating computing experiences specifically for u…

  • screen readers
  • visual impairment
  • user frustration
  • web accessibility
  • affective computing
  • usability
  • blind users
  • emotional impact

• "Beyond Perceivability": Critical Requirements for Universal Design of Information

  Takashi Kato, Masahiro Hori (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper argues that accessibility discussions focus too narrowly on perceivability — making information visually, audibly, or tactilely available — while neglecting the equally critical requirement of cognitive understandability. The authors conte…

  • cognitive accessibility
  • cognitive usability
  • universal design
  • cognitive walkthrough
  • evaluation methods
  • web accessibility
  • perceivability
  • understandability

• Functional Web Accessibility Techniques and Tools from the University of Illinois

  Jon Gunderson, Hadi Bargi Rangin, Nicholas Hoyt (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper presents two complementary tools developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for helping web developers create functionally accessible websites: the CITES/DRES Functional Web Accessibility Best Practices and associated eval…

  • web accessibility
  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • WCAG
  • Section 508
  • browser extension
  • best practices
  • dynamic HTML

• Accessibility Now! Teaching Accessible Computing at the Introductory Level

  Brian J. Rosmaita (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper advocates for teaching accessibility as a core element of introductory computer science courses rather than relegating it to advanced electives. The author describes a web design course at Hamilton College built around an "Accessibility Fi…

  • accessibility education
  • pedagogy
  • web accessibility
  • service learning
  • disability studies
  • curriculum
  • computer science education

• Measuring Website Usability for Visually Impaired People - A Modified GOMS Analysis

  Henrik Tonn-Eichstädt (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper adapts the GOMS (Goals, Operators, Methods, Selection rules) model — a well-established HCI method for estimating task execution times — to measure website usability specifically for blind screen reader users. The author argues that access…

  • screen readers
  • usability
  • web accessibility
  • GOMS
  • braille
  • blind users
  • evaluation methods
  • navigation strategies
  • efficiency

• MathPlayer: Web-Based Math Accessibility

  Neil Soiffer (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This poster paper presents MathPlayer, a free plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer developed by Design Science Inc. that renders MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) visually in web pages and makes mathematical expressions accessible to people wi…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • MathML
  • screen readers
  • print disability
  • learning disabilities
  • braille
  • STEM accessibility
  • web accessibility