Literature Reviews

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

• Text Locating in Scene Images for Reading and Navigation Aids for Visually Impaired Persons

  Chucai Yi (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper presents a computer vision algorithm for locating text in natural scene images — a key capability needed for camera-based reading assistants and navigation aids for people who are blind or visually impaired. While existing reading assistan…

  • computer vision
  • text recognition
  • blindness
  • navigation
  • reading assistant
  • scene text
  • optical character recognition
  • assistive technology

• Color-Audio Encoding Interface for Visual Substitution: See ColOr Matlab-based Demo

  Juan Diego Gomez, Guido Bologna, Thierry Pun (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This demonstration paper presents the See ColOr (Seeing Color with an Orchestra) system, a framework that translates colour information from images into spatialized musical instrument sounds to provide people who are blind with a form of colour perce…

  • sonification
  • visual substitution
  • blindness
  • color perception
  • sensory substitution
  • spatial audio
  • HRTF
  • assistive technology

• Interactive SIGHT Demo: Textual Summaries of Simple Bar Charts

  Seniz Demir, David Oliver, Edward Schwartz, Stephanie Elzer, Sandra Carberry, Kathleen F. McCoy (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This demonstration paper presents Interactive SIGHT, a browser extension designed to make simple bar charts found in online popular media (newspapers, magazines) accessible to people with visual impairments. The system goes beyond providing raw data …

  • information graphics
  • data visualization
  • blindness
  • screen readers
  • natural language generation
  • alternative text
  • bar charts
  • web accessibility
  • browser extension

• Toward 3D Scene Understanding via Audio-description: Kinect-iPad Fusion for the Visually Impaired

  Juan Diego Gomez, Sinan Mohammed, Guido Bologna, Thierry Pun (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This demonstration paper presents a computer-vision-based framework that combines a Microsoft Kinect 3D depth sensor with an iPad touchscreen to enable visually impaired users to understand the spatial layout of indoor scenes through audio. The syste…

  • sonification
  • visual substitution
  • Kinect
  • computer vision
  • blindness
  • object recognition
  • spatial audio
  • tactile exploration
  • electronic travel aid
  • sensory substitution

• Fashion for the Blind: A Study of Perspectives

  Michele A. Burton (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This qualitative study explores how people with vision impairments perceive beauty and make fashion choices, an area largely overlooked in accessibility research which has focused primarily on functional clothing for mobility impairments. The researc…

  • blindness
  • low vision
  • fashion
  • clothing design
  • assistive technology
  • qualitative research
  • diary study
  • color identifier
  • smart textiles
  • shopping accessibility

• Improving Public Transit Accessibility for Blind Riders: A Train Station Navigation Assistant

  Markus Guentert (2011) — The Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This short paper presents a prototype iPhone application designed to help blind people navigate inside train stations — an environment where GPS is unavailable and orientation is particularly challenging. The author's motivation comes from interviews…

  • blindness
  • indoor navigation
  • public transit
  • iPhone
  • wayfinding
  • cognitive map
  • accessibility
  • commodity hardware
  • screen reader

• Annotation-based Video Enrichment for Blind People: A Pilot Study on the Use of Earcons and Speech Synthesis

  Benoît Encelle, Magali Ollagnier-Beldame, Stéphanie Pouchot, Yannick Prié (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This paper presents exploratory work from the ACAV (Collaborative Annotation for Video Accessibility) project, investigating how combining earcons (nonverbal audio messages) with speech synthesis can improve video accessibility for blind people. Trad…

  • video accessibility
  • blindness
  • audio description
  • earcons
  • speech technology
  • multimedia accessibility
  • sonification

• On the Intelligibility of Fast Synthesized Speech for Individuals with Early-Onset Blindness

  Amanda Stent, Ann Syrdal, Taniya Mishra (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This paper reports on a pilot experiment comparing the intelligibility of fast synthesized speech across different text-to-speech (TTS) systems for individuals with early-onset blindness (onset before age seven). People who are blind increasingly use…

  • text-to-speech
  • screen readers
  • blindness
  • speech technology
  • speech intelligibility
  • assistive technology

• Automatically Generating Tailored Accessible User Interfaces for Ubiquitous Services

  Julio Abascal, Amaia Aizpurua, Idoia Cearreta, Borja Gamecho, Nestor Garay-Vitoria, Raúl Miñón (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This paper presents EGOKI, a system that automatically generates tailored accessible user interfaces for ubiquitous services based on individual user capabilities. In ubiquitous computing environments, people access services like information kiosks, …

  • adaptive interfaces
  • automatic interface generation
  • ubiquitous computing
  • ambient assisted living
  • user modeling
  • blindness
  • low vision
  • motor impairment
  • cognitive disability
  • ontology

• An Integrated System for Blind Day-to-Day Life Autonomy

  Hugo Fernandes, José Faria, Hugo Paredes, João Barroso (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This demonstration paper presents nav4b, an integrated system designed to support the day-to-day autonomy of blind people by combining indoor/outdoor navigation guidance with object recognition in a single platform. Unlike existing solutions that req…

  • blindness
  • navigation
  • RFID
  • object recognition
  • white cane
  • mobile accessibility
  • wayfinding
  • assistive technology
  • bone conduction