Literature Reviews

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

• Design and Evaluation of a Multimodal Science Simulation

  Brianna J. Tomlinson, Prakriti Kaini, Siyan Zhou, Taliesin L. Smith, Emily B. Moore, Bruce N. Walker (2018) — Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '18)

  This demonstration paper presents a multimodal version of PhET's John Travoltage interactive physics simulation, designed to support learners with and without visual impairments in exploring static electricity concepts. The key design goal was creati…

  • STEM accessibility
  • sonification
  • multimodal interface
  • visual impairment
  • science education
  • PhET
  • auditory display
  • screen readers
  • universal design
  • inclusive design

• Assistive Debugging to Support Accessible LaTeX Based Document Authoring

  Ahtsham Manzoor, Murayyiam Parvez, Suleman Shahid, Asim Karim (2018) — Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '18)

  This demonstration paper presents ALAP (Accessible LaTeX-based Authoring and Presentation), an open-source extension to the TeXlipse Eclipse plugin that makes LaTeX document authoring more accessible for blind researchers and writers. LaTeX is widely…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • LaTeX
  • blind and low vision
  • text-to-speech
  • document authoring
  • STEM accessibility
  • debugging
  • screen readers
  • programming accessibility

• Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology (DO-IT) on the electronic highway

  Sheryl Burgstahler, Dan Comden (1994) — Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This paper describes DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology), a National Science Foundation-funded project based at the University of Washington's College of Engineering. DO-IT was designed to recruit and retain students w…

  • STEM accessibility
  • STEM education
  • digital divide
  • disability employment
  • internet accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • higher education
  • adaptive technology

• Audio formatting of a graph

  S. H. Zhang, M. Krishnamoorthy (1994) — Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This 1994 paper introduces Audio Formatting of a Graph (AFG), a software package designed to make graph theory accessible to visually impaired students and researchers. Graph theory — the mathematical study of relationships between objects represente…

  • sonification
  • graph theory
  • blind users
  • audio representation
  • mathematics accessibility
  • STEM accessibility
  • non-visual interaction
  • menu-driven interface

• Mathematics on the Web: Emerging Opportunities for Visually Impaired People

  Cristian Bernareggi, Dominique Archambault (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the @Science European thematic network surveys the state of the art in making mathematical content on the web accessible to visually impaired people, arguing that MathML adoption is the key to unlocking accessibility. The authors expl…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • blind users
  • MathML
  • braille
  • screen readers
  • STEM accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • web standards
  • education accessibility

• Doing Math: Mathematics Accessibility Issues

  Nancy Alajarmeh (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This student award paper argues that mathematics accessibility for visually impaired students must move beyond rendering (displaying and reading mathematical notation) to support "doing the math" — the active manipulation of algebraic expressions, eq…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • STEM accessibility
  • education accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • MathML

• Improving accessibility to mathematical formulas: the Wikipedia math accessor

  Leo Ferres, Jose Fuentes Sepúlveda (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents MathAcc, an assistive technology system that generates natural language descriptions in Spanish for the more than 355,000 mathematical formulas found across 26,174 Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia renders formulas as rasterised PNG i…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • blindness
  • natural language generation
  • MathML
  • Wikipedia
  • STEM accessibility
  • multilingual accessibility
  • screen readers

• Towards Making Mathematics a First Class Citizen in General Screen Readers

  Volker Sorge, Charles Chen, T. V. Raman, David Tseng (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents a comprehensive approach to integrating mathematical speech translation into ChromeVox, Google's open-source screen reader for the Chrome browser and Chrome OS. The authors address the fundamental challenge that mathematical notat…

  • screen readers
  • mathematics accessibility
  • MathML
  • ChromeVox
  • text-to-speech
  • STEM accessibility
  • semantic enrichment
  • interactive exploration
  • speech rules

• Contextual Exploration of Mathematical Formulae on the Web for People with Visual Disabilities in Brazil with an Open-Source Screen Reader

  Hérlon Manollo Cândido Guedes, Paula C. F. Cardoso, William Massami Watanabe, André Pimenta Freire (2022) — Proceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC)

  This paper presents the implementation and evaluation of Access8Math-NavMatBR, an NVDA screen reader add-on for reading and exploring mathematical formulae on the web in Brazilian Portuguese. The add-on implements contextual exploration — a strategy …

  • mathematical accessibility
  • screen readers
  • NVDA
  • MathML
  • visual disability
  • Portuguese language
  • contextual exploration
  • STEM accessibility

• Browser-Independent Accessible Math

  Neil Soiffer (2015) — Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper describes the re-architecture of MathPlayer (version 4) from Design Science, transforming it from an Internet Explorer-only plugin into a standalone library that any assistive technology can use to make mathematical notation accessible in …

  • MathML
  • STEM accessibility
  • screen readers
  • speech generation
  • braille
  • navigation
  • assistive technology
  • mathematics accessibility