Literature Reviews

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

• GeniAuti: Tracking Challenging Behaviors of Children with Autism for Data-Driven Interventions

  Kiwon Choi, Dongho Jang, Dasol Lee, Seoyoung Park (2018) — Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '18)

  This student research competition paper presents GeniAuti, a mobile application designed to help caregivers of children with autism track challenging behaviors using the ABC (Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence) framework. Challenging behaviors in autism…

  • autism
  • challenging behavior
  • mobile application
  • data visualization
  • voice recognition
  • caregiving
  • behavior tracking

• (Natural Language) Interaction with Graphical Representations of Statistical Data

  Leo Ferres, Petro Verkhogliad, Louis Boucher (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from Carleton University and Statistics Canada presents iGraph-Lite, a system that makes statistical graphs published in "The Daily" (Statistics Canada's main dissemination publication) accessible to blind and visually impaired users throu…

  • data visualization
  • blind users
  • visual impairment
  • natural language processing
  • web accessibility
  • accessible graphics
  • text-to-speech
  • data accessibility
  • government

• AMAri: A Reporting Interface for Accessibility Evaluations

  Silvia Mirri, Matteo Casadei, Ludovico A. Muratori, Matteo Battistelli, Paola Salomoni (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This short paper presents AMAri (Accessibility Monitoring Application Reporting Interface), an open-source web-based tool designed to make large-scale accessibility evaluation data understandable and actionable for distributed web authoring and edito…

  • accessibility monitoring
  • accessibility evaluation
  • data visualization
  • accessibility tools
  • reporting
  • accessibility dashboards

• A Syntactic Analysis of Accessibility to a Corpus of Statistical Graphs

  Leo Ferres, Petro Verkhogliad, Livia Sumegi, Louis Boucher, Martin Lachance, Gitte Lindgaard (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from Carleton University and Statistics Canada tackles a persistent accessibility challenge: making statistical graphs accessible to blind and visually impaired users. The authors analysed a corpus of 120 real-world statistical graphs from…

  • data visualization
  • graph accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • alt text
  • knowledge representation
  • automated accessibility
  • statistical graphics

• Enabling Access to Geo-referenced Information: Atlas.txt

  Kavita E. Thomas, Livia Sumegi, Leo Ferres, Somayajulu Sripada (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the University of Aberdeen and Carleton University presents Atlas.txt, a data-to-text natural language generation (NLG) system designed to make geo-referenced data — such as census maps and thematic choropleth maps — accessible to vis…

  • natural language generation
  • visual impairment
  • data accessibility
  • geographic information
  • data visualization
  • screen readers
  • census data

• Interactive SIGHT into Information Graphics

  Seniz Demir, David Oliver, Edward Schwartz, Stephanie Elzer, Sandra Carberry, Kathleen F. McCoy (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents Interactive SIGHT (Summarizing Information GrapHics Textually), a system that provides visually impaired users with access to the high-level knowledge conveyed by bar charts in electronic documents. Unlike approaches that simply r…

  • visual impairment
  • data visualization
  • natural language generation
  • graph accessibility
  • bar charts
  • image accessibility
  • alternative text
  • Bayesian network
  • information retrieval
  • interactive dialogue
  • screen readers

• Sound, Touch, or the Full Monty? A Comparative Study of Accessible Data Exploration Systems for Blind Users

  Pramod Chundury, J. Bern Jordan, Yasmin Reyazuddin, Niklas Elmqvist, Jonathan Lazar (2026) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents a controlled within-subject comparative study of three accessible data exploration systems representing different sensory modalities: Olli (a screen-reader-based system using hierarchical text descriptions and keyboard navigation)…

  • data visualization
  • sonification
  • tactile graphics
  • refreshable braille display
  • multimodal accessibility
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • user study
  • data accessibility

• GraSSML: Accessible Smart Schematic Diagrams for All

  Z. Ben Fredj, D. A. Duce (2006) — Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper addresses a persistent gap in web accessibility: making schematic diagrams (organizational charts, flowcharts, UML diagrams, etc.) accessible to people who cannot perceive visual representations. While previous approaches tried to work "bo…

  • accessible graphics
  • SVG
  • semantic web
  • diagram accessibility
  • alternative representations
  • multimodal
  • visual impairment
  • data visualization

• A Crowdsourcing Platform for the Construction of Accessibility Maps

  Carlos Cardonha, Diego Gallo, Priscilla Avegliano, Ricardo Herrmann, Fernando Koch, Sergio Borger (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This highly cited paper (69 citations) from IBM Research Brazil presents a comprehensive crowdsourcing platform for constructing outdoor accessibility maps through two complementary data collection approaches. The first, IBM Citizen Sensing, is an ac…

  • crowdsourcing
  • accessibility mapping
  • physical accessibility
  • urban accessibility
  • citizen sensing
  • smart cities
  • mobile accessibility
  • data visualization
  • sensor data

• Citizen Sensing for Collaborative Construction of Accessibility Maps

  Kelly Shigeno, Sergio Borger, Diego Gallo, Ricardo Herrmann, Mateus Molinaro, Carlos Cardonha, Fernando Koch, Priscilla Avegliano (2013) — Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This demo paper presents IBM Sidewalks, a mobile application developed by IBM Research Brazil that enables citizens to collaboratively report physical accessibility issues in urban environments through crowdsourcing. The application is part of IBM's …

  • crowdsourcing
  • accessibility mapping
  • mobile application
  • physical accessibility
  • urban accessibility
  • citizen sensing
  • data visualization
  • smart cities