Literature Reviews — A11y Paradise

iSonic: Interactive Sonification for Non-visual Data Exploration

Haixia Zhao, Catherine Plaisant, Ben Shneiderman (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

This paper presents iSonic, an interactive sonification tool developed at the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab that enables vision-impaired users to explore geo-referenced statistical data such as population distribution, crime r…

Verification of Computer Display Pre-compensation for Visual Aberrations in an Artificial Eye

Miguel Alonso Jr., Armando Barreto, Julie A. Jacko, Malek Adjouadi (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

This paper presents experimental verification that computer display images can be pre-compensated to counteract the visual aberrations present in an optical system, specifically tested using a constructed artificial eye. The research builds on earlie…

Audio Enriched Links: Web Page Previews for Blind Users

Peter Parente (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

This paper presents Audio Enriched Links (AEL), a JAWS screen reader extension for Internet Explorer that provides spoken previews of linked web pages before blind users follow a hyperlink. The system addresses a fundamental asymmetry in web browsing…

Rendering Tables in Audio: The Interaction of Structure and Reading Styles

Yeliz Yesilada, Robert Stevens, Carole Goble, Shazad Hussein (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of why HTML tables are problematic for screen reader users and proposes two complementary approaches for non-visual table access. The authors from the University of Manchester first characterize what makes…

Strategic Design for Users with Diabetic Retinopathy: Factors Influencing Performance in a Menu-Selection Task

Paula J. Edwards, Leon Barnard, V. Kathlene Emery, Ji Soo Yi, Kevin P. Moloney, Thitima Kongnakorn, Julie A. Jacko, François Sainfort, Pamela R. Oliver, Joseph Pizzimenti, Annette Bade, Greg Fecho, Josephine Shallo-Hoffmann (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

This paper examines how interface design features affect menu selection performance for users with Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), a progressive eye condition affecting 40-45% of the approximately 18 million Americans with diabetes. The study involved 25 …

Nonvisual Tool for Navigating Hierarchical Structures

Ann C. Smith, Justin S. Cook, Joan M. Francioni, Asif Hossain, Mohd Anwar, M. Fayezur Rahman (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

This paper presents the Aural Tree Navigator, an Eclipse IDE plug-in that enables blind programmers to navigate hierarchical program structures (such as package explorers, class hierarchies, and file systems) using keyboard commands and speech/sound …

Semantic Bookmarking for Non-Visual Web Access

Saikat Mukherjee, I. V. Ramakrishnan, Michael Kifer (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

This paper introduces semantic bookmarking, a technique for non-visual web access that allows blind users to bookmark meaningful content segments on web pages using domain ontologies rather than structural HTML positions. The research is built on Hea…

UMA: A System for Universal Mathematics Accessibility

A. I. Karshmer, G. Gupta, E. Pontelli, K. Miesenberger, N. Ammalai, D. Gopal, M. Batusic, B. Stöger, B. Palmer, H-F. Guo (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

This paper presents the Universal Mathematics Accessibility (UMA) system, a multi-institution collaboration to make mathematical content interoperable between the notation systems used by blind and sighted individuals. The fundamental problem is that…

Middleware to Expand Context and Preview in Hypertext

Simon Harper, Carole Goble, Robert Stevens, Yeliz Yesilada (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

This paper presents a middleware tool that automatically annotates web pages with expanded context and preview information for hypertext links, addressing a core navigation problem for visually impaired web users. The authors draw an analogy between …

Image Pre-Compensation to Facilitate Computer Access for Users with Refractive Errors

Miguel Alonso, Armando Barreto, J. Gualberto Cremades (2003) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '04)

This paper presents a novel approach to improving computer access for people with refractive visual errors by pre-compensating displayed images using knowledge of the user's specific optical aberration. The core insight is that the human eye can be m…