Literature Reviews

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

• Comparing Native Signers' Perception of American Sign Language Animations and Videos via Eye Tracking

  Hernisa Kacorri, Allen Harper, Matt Huenerfauth (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper investigates whether eye tracking can serve as an alternative or complementary evaluation method for assessing the quality of synthesized American Sign Language (ASL) animations. Computer-generated ASL animations offer accessibility benefi…

  • sign language
  • American Sign Language
  • animation
  • eye tracking
  • deaf accessibility
  • facial expression
  • user study
  • sign language synthesis

• Manual Evaluation of Synthesised Sign Language Avatars

  Robert Smith, Brian Nolan (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This poster paper evaluates whether adding emotional facial expressions to sign language avatars improves their comprehension and naturalness for Irish Sign Language (ISL) users. Sign languages convey emotion and prosody primarily through non-manual …

  • sign language
  • sign language avatar
  • Irish Sign Language
  • deaf
  • facial expressions
  • non-manual features
  • HamNoSys
  • SiGML
  • accessibility

• Accurate and Accessible Motion-Capture Glove Calibration for Sign Language Data Collection

  Matt Huenerfauth, Pengfei Lu (2010) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper addresses a critical bottleneck in sign language technology research: the calibration of motion-capture gloves used to record hand movements for ASL animation and recognition systems. Motion-capture data enables the development of sign lan…

  • sign language
  • American Sign Language
  • deaf accessibility
  • motion capture
  • animation
  • sign language recognition
  • assistive technology
  • research methodology
  • accessible research

• Data-Driven Synthesis of Spatially Inflected Verbs for American Sign Language Animation

  Pengfei Lu, Matt Huenerfauth (2011) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper addresses a critical accessibility challenge: most deaf individuals in the US have limited English literacy (the majority of deaf high school graduates read at a fourth-grade level), making written web content inaccessible. While sign lang…

  • sign language
  • ASL
  • animation
  • deaf accessibility
  • natural language processing
  • avatar technology

• Identifying Sign Language Videos in Video Sharing Sites

  Frank M. Shipman, Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna, Caio D. D. Monteiro (2014) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper addresses the challenge of finding sign language videos within general video sharing platforms like YouTube. While these platforms contain growing libraries of sign language content created by deaf community members, locating this content …

  • sign language
  • ASL
  • video classification
  • machine learning
  • computer vision
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • video sharing
  • information retrieval
  • SVM

• Towards Fully Automated Motion Capture of Signs -- Development and Evaluation of a Key Word Signing Avatar

  Simon Alexanderson, Jonas Beskow (2015) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This research develops a cost-effective method for capturing sign language motion to animate a signing avatar for the Tivoli project—a game-based learning environment teaching Key Word Signing (KWS) to children with communication disabilities includi…

  • sign language
  • motion capture
  • signing avatar
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • Key Word Signing
  • Swedish Sign Language
  • animation
  • virtual characters
  • children

• The FATE Landscape of Sign Language AI Datasets: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

  Danielle Bragg, Oscar Koller, Mary Bellard, Larwan Berke, Patrick Boudreault, Annelies Braffort, Naomi Caselli, Matt Huenerfauth, Hernisa Kacorri, Tessa Verhoef, Christian Vogler, Meredith Ringel Morris (2021) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This interdisciplinary paper examines the ethical landscape of AI datasets used for sign language recognition, generation, and translation technologies. Drawing on expertise from deaf community members, sign language linguists, and AI researchers, th…

  • sign language
  • AI datasets
  • deaf community
  • FATE framework
  • machine learning
  • sign language recognition
  • sign language generation
  • sign language translation
  • data ethics
  • accessibility research

• Deep Learning Methods for Sign Language Translation

  Tejaswini Ananthanarayana, Priyanshu Srivastava, Akash Chintha, Akhil Santha, Brian Landy, Joseph Panaro, Andre Webster, Nikunj Kotecha, Shagan Sah, Thomastine Sarchet, Raymond Ptucha, Ifeoma Nwogu (2021) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This comprehensive study evaluates deep learning methods for translating sign language video directly to spoken/written text—critically, without requiring the intermediate step of gloss-based recognition (manual sign-for-sign transcription). The rese…

  • sign language
  • machine translation
  • deep learning
  • transformer
  • neural network
  • computer vision
  • Deaf and Hard of Hearing
  • sequence modeling
  • pose estimation

• A Systematic Review of User Studies as a Basis for the Design of Systems for Automatic Sign Language Processing

  Soraia Prietch, J. Alfredo Sánchez, Josefina Guerrero (2022) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This systematic literature review examines how user studies have been conducted in the design of Automatic Sign Language Processing (ASLP) systems. The authors searched seven repositories plus Google Scholar, identifying 2,486 papers and ultimately s…

  • sign language
  • automatic sign language processing
  • user studies
  • participatory design
  • Deaf community
  • systematic literature review
  • sign language recognition
  • sign language generation
  • sign language translation

• Comparing Methods of Displaying Language Feedback for Student Videos of American Sign Language

  Matt Huenerfauth, Elaine Gale, Brian Penly, Mackenzie Willard, Dhananjai Hariharan (2015) — ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This research investigates how to effectively provide feedback to students learning American Sign Language (ASL), specifically comparing different methods of presenting information about errors and correct usage in their signing videos. The work is m…

  • American Sign Language
  • ASL
  • deaf education
  • language learning
  • video feedback
  • Wizard-of-Oz
  • computer-assisted instruction
  • sign language
  • hearing parents