Literature Reviews

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

• Follow That Sound: Using Sonification and Corrective Verbal Feedback to Teach Touchscreen Gestures

  Uran Oh, Shaun K. Kane, Leah Findlater (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '13)

  This paper proposes and evaluates two techniques for teaching touchscreen gestures to users with visual impairments: gesture sonification (mapping finger position to audio using pitch for the y-axis and stereo panning for the x-axis) and corrective v…

  • touchscreen accessibility
  • sonification
  • gesture learning
  • blind users
  • visual impairment
  • mobile accessibility
  • audio feedback
  • text-to-speech
  • VoiceOver
  • gesture recognition

• Auditory Displays for Accessible Fantasy Sports

  Jared M. Batterman, Jonathan H. Schuett, Bruce N. Walker (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '13)

  This short paper addresses the inaccessibility of online fantasy sports platforms for visually impaired users and presents an accessible fantasy football system built around auditory display techniques. Fantasy sports are a major social and recreatio…

  • auditory display
  • sonification
  • blind users
  • visual impairment
  • sports accessibility
  • earcons
  • spearcons
  • auditory graphs
  • screen readers
  • recreation
  • social inclusion

• Comparison of Reading Accuracy between Tactile Pie Charts and Tactile Band Charts

  Kosuke Araki, Tetsuya Watanabe (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '13)

  This short paper compares the accuracy and efficiency of reading tactile pie charts versus tactile band charts for determining proportional data through touch. The authors are developing software that automatically generates tactile charts from CSV d…

  • tactile graphics
  • data visualization
  • blind users
  • braille
  • pie charts
  • band charts
  • tactile perception
  • accessible graphics
  • education

• Uncovering the Role of Expectations on Perceived Web Accessibility

  Amaia Aizpurua, Myriam Arrue, Markel Vigo (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '13)

  This short paper investigates how user expectations shape the perception of web accessibility for blind users, arguing that guideline compliance alone does not guarantee a satisfying user experience. The authors note a key gap: prior research found t…

  • web accessibility
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • user experience
  • perceived accessibility
  • expectations
  • usability testing
  • WCAG
  • qualitative research

• Designing an Accessible Clothing Tag System for People with Vision Impairments

  Michele A. Williams, Kathryn Ringland, Amy Hurst (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '13)

  This short paper explores the design of accessible clothing identification systems for people with vision impairments. The authors note that many clothing characteristics — color, pattern, fabric type, care instructions — are inherently visual and th…

  • vision impairment
  • blind users
  • RFID
  • wearable technology
  • daily living
  • fashion accessibility
  • participatory design
  • independent living
  • QR codes
  • Arduino

• WebInSight: Making Web Images Accessible

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Ryan S. Kaminsky, Richard E. Ladner, Oscar M. Danielsson, Gordon L. Hempton (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper introduces WebInSight, a system that automatically generates and inserts alternative text for web images that lack it. The authors first establish the scale of the problem through a series of web studies examining five groups of important …

  • web accessibility
  • alternative text
  • image accessibility
  • OCR
  • optical character recognition
  • transformation proxy
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • automated labeling
  • crowdsourcing

• WebinSitu: A Comparative Analysis of Blind and Sighted Browsing Behavior

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Anna C. Cavender, Jeremy T. Brudvik, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Richard E. Ladner (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper presents WebinSitu, a remote in situ study comparing the web browsing behavior of 10 blind and 10 sighted users over a one-week period. The study used an advanced web proxy built on UsaProxy that injected JavaScript into viewed pages to re…

  • web accessibility
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • browsing behavior
  • user research
  • remote study
  • coping strategies
  • alternative text
  • dynamic content
  • AJAX
  • skip links

• 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

• What's New? Making Web Page Updates Accessible

  Yevgen Borodin, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Rohit Raman, I. V. Ramakrishnan (2008) — Assets '08: Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper introduces Dynamo, a system that makes dynamic web page content accessible to blind screen reader users by automatically detecting changes across all types of web page updates and providing a unified interface for reviewing them. The paper…

  • screen readers
  • web accessibility
  • dynamic content
  • AJAX
  • ARIA
  • blind users
  • DOM
  • JavaScript

• Slide Rule: Making Mobile Touch Screens Accessible to Blind People Using Multi-Touch Interaction Techniques

  Shaun K. Kane, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2008) — Assets '08: Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper introduces Slide Rule, a set of audio-based multi-touch interaction techniques that make touch screen devices accessible to blind users without requiring any additional hardware. Published in 2008 — just one year after the iPhone launched …

  • blind users
  • touch screens
  • mobile accessibility
  • multi-touch interaction
  • gestures
  • screen readers
  • assistive technology
  • eyes-free interaction