Literature Reviews

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

• Improving Accessibility to Statistical Graphs: The iGraph-Lite System

  Leo Ferres, Petro Verkhogliad, Gitte Lindgaard, Louis Boucher, Antoine Chretien, Martin Lachance (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from Carleton University and Statistics Canada presents iGraph-Lite, a system that makes statistical graphs accessible to blind and visually impaired people by generating natural language descriptions and providing an interactive navigatio…

  • data visualization accessibility
  • graph accessibility
  • natural language generation
  • screen readers
  • blindness
  • statistics
  • non-visual interaction
  • information accessibility

• 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

• Observing Sara: A Case Study of a Blind Person's Interactions with Technology

  Kristen Shinohara, Josh Tenenberg (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from the University of Washington, Tacoma presents a rich, in-depth case study of Sara, a congenitally blind college student, observed and interviewed across multiple sessions as she interacts with a wide range of technologies in her home.…

  • blindness
  • assistive technology
  • case study
  • technology biographies
  • workarounds
  • screen readers
  • JAWS
  • braille
  • stigma
  • qualitative research
  • inclusive design
  • disability identity

• MathPlayer V2.1: Web-based Math Accessibility

  Neil Soiffer (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper describes MathPlayer v2.1, a plug-in developed by Design Science, Inc. that renders MathML visually in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Adobe Acrobat/Reader while providing extensive accessibility features for people with print disabilities…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • MathML
  • screen readers
  • braille
  • print disabilities
  • synchronized highlighting
  • math-to-speech
  • PDF accessibility
  • learning disabilities

• 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

• A Prototype of Google Interfaces Modified for Simplifying Interaction for Blind Users

  Patrizia Andronico, Marina Buzzi, Carlos Castillo, Barbara Leporini (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This demo paper from Italy's National Research Council and Università di Roma presents a prototype that restructures Google's search and results pages to be more usable for blind screen reader users. Previous research had shown that blind users took …

  • search engine accessibility
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • JAWS
  • usability
  • Google
  • XSLT
  • heading structure
  • keyboard navigation

• 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

• Transforming Flash to XML for Accessibility Evaluations

  Shin Saito, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper from IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory proposes a method for transforming Flash content into XML structures to enable automated accessibility evaluation. At the time of publication, Flash was installed on over 95% of personal computers and was…

  • Flash accessibility
  • automated testing
  • accessibility evaluation
  • rich internet applications
  • screen readers
  • XML transformation
  • MSAA

• Using Think Aloud Protocol with Blind Users: A Case for Inclusive Usability Evaluation Methods

  Sambhavi Chandrashekar, Tony Stockman, Deborah Fels, Rachel Benedyk (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper examines whether the Think Aloud Protocol (TAP), one of the most widely used usability evaluation methods, can be effectively applied when testing with blind screen reader users. The study involved six vision-impaired students evaluating a…

  • usability testing
  • think aloud protocol
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • research methods
  • inclusive design
  • cognitive load
  • user research