Literature Reviews

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

• An Interactive Method for Accessing Tables in HTML

  Toshiya Oogane, Chieko Asakawa (1998) — Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This paper from IBM Japan proposes a method for converting HTML tables into non-visual, navigable representations for screen reader users. At the time, Screen Reader/2 (the Japanese version of OS/2's screen reader) could read displayed text informati…

  • web accessibility
  • screen reader
  • HTML tables
  • table accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • non-visual interaction
  • web development

• VRML-Based Representations of ASL Fingerspelling on the World Wide Web

  S. Augustine Su, Richard K. Furuta (1998) — Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This paper presents techniques for representing American Sign Language (ASL) fingerspelling using 3D hand models in VRML 2.0 (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) on the World Wide Web. The authors argue that VRML offers a more effective way to documen…

  • sign language
  • American Sign Language
  • fingerspelling
  • VRML
  • virtual reality
  • web accessibility
  • deaf accessibility
  • 3D modeling
  • animation

• Designing the World Wide Web for People with Disabilities: A User Centered Design Approach

  Lila F. Laux, Peter R. McNally, Michael G. Paciello, Gregg C. Vanderheiden (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This 1996 panel paper brings together four perspectives on making the early World Wide Web accessible to people with disabilities. Lila Laux frames the problem by identifying special user populations — elderly people, those with low incomes, rural an…

  • web accessibility
  • user-centered design
  • assistive technology
  • universal design
  • presentation independence
  • hypermedia
  • pervasive accessible technology

• V-Lynx: Bringing the World Wide Web to Sight Impaired Users

  Mitchell Krell, Davor Cubranic (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This 1996 paper from the University of Southern Mississippi presents V-Lynx, one of the earliest voice-enabled web browsers designed to make the World Wide Web accessible to sight-impaired users. At this time, WWW traffic had only recently become sig…

  • web accessibility
  • screen reader
  • speech synthesis
  • web browser
  • blind users
  • non-visual browsing
  • HTML
  • hypertext navigation
  • accessibility history

• Automation of Repetitive Web Browsing Tasks with Voice-Enabled Macros

  Yevgen Borodin (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper proposes an approach for automating repetitive web browsing tasks through personalized macros with a speech-enabled interface, implemented within the HearSay non-visual web browser at Stony Brook University. The core problem is that non-vi…

  • screen reader
  • web accessibility
  • non-visual browsing
  • web macro
  • voice interface
  • web automation
  • blind users
  • assistive technology

• Social Accessibility: Achieving Accessibility through Collaborative Metadata Authoring

  Hironobu Takagi, Shinya Kawanaka, Masatomo Kobayashi, Takashi Itoh, Chieko Asakawa (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This IBM Research Tokyo paper proposes Social Accessibility, a system that applies social computing principles to web accessibility by enabling a worldwide community of volunteers to collaboratively create external accessibility metadata for inaccess…

  • web accessibility
  • social computing
  • collaborative authoring
  • metadata
  • web transcoding
  • screen reader
  • crowdsourcing
  • assistive technology

• Investigating Sighted Users' Browsing Behaviour to Assist Web Accessibility

  Eleni Michailidou, Simon Harper, Sean Bechhofer (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents an eye tracking study investigating how sighted users browse web pages, with the goal of using these insights to improve web accessibility for visually impaired users. The core argument is that understanding sighted users' visual …

  • eye tracking
  • web accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • web design
  • visual complexity
  • screen readers
  • user research
  • browsing behavior
  • transcoding

• Input to the Mobile Web is Situationally-Impaired

  Tianyi Chen (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper investigates the overlap between input problems experienced by mobile web users and those faced by disabled desktop users, particularly people with motor impairments. The author argues that these two domains are typically studied in isolat…

  • mobile accessibility
  • situational impairment
  • motor disability
  • input methods
  • web accessibility
  • mobile devices
  • usability

• A comparative test of web accessibility evaluation methods

  Giorgio Brajnik (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a controlled laboratory experiment comparing two web accessibility evaluation methods: conformance review (CR) and barrier walkthrough (BW). Conformance review is the traditional approach where evaluators check whether a page sati…

  • accessibility evaluation
  • conformance testing
  • barrier walkthrough
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG
  • evaluation methods
  • accessibility testing
  • quality assessment

• A user evaluation of the SADIe transcoder

  Darren Lunn, Sean Bechhofer, Simon Harper (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a user evaluation of SADIe (Structural-Semantics for Accessibility and Device Independence), a system that uses Semantic Web technologies to make web pages more accessible to screen reader users. The core problem SADIe addresses i…

  • web accessibility
  • screen readers
  • semantic web
  • transcoding
  • visual impairment
  • ontology
  • web content transformation
  • CSS
  • assistive technology