Literature Reviews

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

• TextSL: A Command-Based Virtual World Interface for the Visually Impaired

  Eelke Folmer, Bei Yuan, Dave Carr, Manjari Sapre (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents TextSL, a text-based client for the virtual world Second Life that enables access via screen readers. Second Life is a non-game virtual world where users control avatars to explore 3D environments, socialise with others, and inter…

  • virtual worlds
  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • game accessibility
  • social interaction
  • command-line interface
  • Second Life
  • alternative interface

• Collaborative Web Accessibility Improvement: Challenges and Possibilities

  Hironobu Takagi, Shinya Kawanaka, Masatomo Kobayashi, Daisuke Sato, Chieko Asakawa (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper reports on the Social Accessibility Project, an experimental service developed by IBM Research in Tokyo that uses collaborative metadata authoring to improve web accessibility. The system works through a three-part architecture: end users …

  • web accessibility
  • collaborative accessibility
  • crowdsourcing
  • metadata
  • screen readers
  • social computing
  • web transcoding
  • alternative text

• Evaluating Prosodic Cues as a Means to Disambiguate Algebraic Expressions: An Empirical Study

  Ed Gellenbeck, Andreas Stefik (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper investigates whether inserting pauses into text-to-speech renderings of mathematical expressions can help listeners distinguish between structurally different but verbally similar algebraic expressions. The core problem is that written mat…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • text-to-speech
  • screen readers
  • MathML
  • SSML
  • DAISY
  • prosody
  • learning disability
  • dyslexia

• Towards a Tool for Keystroke Level Modeling of Skilled Screen Reading

  Shari Trewin, Bonnie E. John, John Richards, Cal Swart, Jonathan Brezin, Rachel Bellamy, John Thomas (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper explores whether cognitive models of auditory interaction — specifically the Keystroke-Level Model (KLM) — can be adapted to predict task completion times for skilled screen reader users, with the goal of helping designers evaluate the usa…

  • screen readers
  • cognitive modeling
  • usability
  • keyboard navigation
  • JAWS
  • keystroke-level model
  • auditory interface
  • human-computer interaction

• Designing Auditory Cues to Enhance Spoken Mathematics for Visually Impaired Users

  Emma Murphy, Enda Bates, Dónal Fitzpatrick (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper presents a novel auditory math system designed to make spoken mathematical equations more accessible to visually impaired users. The core challenge addressed is that visual mathematical notation conveys structure — such as fractions, super…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • auditory display
  • non-speech sound
  • spearcons
  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • participatory design
  • sonification

• Evaluating a Tool for Improving Accessibility to Charts and Graphs

  Leo Ferres, Gitte Lindgaard, Livia Sumegi (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper presents two formative usability studies of iGraph-Lite, a natural language-based assistive technology that enables blind and visually impaired people to interact with statistical line graphs through keyboard commands and text-to-speech ou…

  • data visualization
  • blindness
  • natural language generation
  • information graphics
  • screen readers
  • text-to-speech
  • usability evaluation
  • graph accessibility

• 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

• FlashDOM: Interacting with Flash Content from the Document Object Model

  Kyle I. Murray (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper presents FlashDOM, a system that exposes Adobe Flash content to assistive technologies by translating Flash's internal structure and interactive elements into standard HTML Document Object Model (DOM) elements. The core problem addressed i…

  • screen readers
  • Adobe Flash
  • Document Object Model
  • web accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • WebAnywhere
  • browser extension
  • ActionScript

• 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

• Thematic Organization of Web Content for Distraction-Free Text-to-Speech Narration

  Muhammad Asiful Islam, Faisal Ahmed, Yevgen Borodin, I.V. Ramakrishnan (2012) — Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012)

  This paper addresses a fundamental problem in how blind users experience web content through screen readers: the serial, linear narration of complex web pages that contain multiple thematic elements — news stories, ads, navigation taxonomies, and opi…

  • screen readers
  • web segmentation
  • text-to-speech
  • blind users
  • cognitive load
  • web accessibility
  • clustering
  • information retrieval
  • content organization