Literature Reviews

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

• Interactively Modeling and Visualizing Neighborhood Accessibility at Scale: An Initial Study of Washington DC

  Anthony Li, Manaswi Saha, Anupam Gupta, Jon E. Froehlich (2018) — Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2018)

  This poster paper from the University of Maryland and University of Washington presents two prototype tools — AccessScore and AccessVisDC — for modeling and visualizing neighborhood-level physical accessibility for people with mobility impairments. T…

  • urban accessibility
  • wheelchair accessibility
  • walkability
  • data visualization
  • crowdsourcing
  • sidewalk accessibility
  • curb ramps
  • mobility impairment
  • geospatial

• Volunteer-Based Online Studies With Older Adults and People with Disabilities

  Qisheng Li, Krzysztof Z. Gajos, Katharina Reinecke (2018) — Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '18)

  This paper validates volunteer-based online experiments as a methodology for conducting large-scale accessibility research with people with disabilities and older adults — populations that are notoriously difficult to recruit for laboratory studies. …

  • research methodology
  • online experimentation
  • accessibility research
  • aging
  • participant recruitment
  • crowdsourcing
  • dyslexia
  • autism
  • cognitive accessibility

• Towards One World Web with HearSay3

  Yevgen Borodin, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Amanda Stent, I. V. Ramakrishnan (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This short paper presents HearSay 3, a self-voicing non-visual web browser developed at Stony Brook University and the University of Washington, designed to address accessibility challenges introduced by Web 2.0. Building on two previous versions — t…

  • screen readers
  • non-visual web browser
  • blind users
  • collaborative accessibility
  • multilingual accessibility
  • dynamic content
  • Web 2.0
  • crowdsourcing
  • text-to-speech

• Prosumers and accessibility: how to ensure a productive interaction

  Yod Samuel Martín García, Beatriz San Miguel González, Juan Carlos Yelmo García (2009) — Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)

  This paper examines how accessibility can be ensured in user-generated content (UGC) created by "prosumers" — ordinary web users who both consume and produce content but lack any training, awareness, or accountability regarding accessibility. The aut…

  • user-generated content
  • social media
  • ATAG
  • authoring tools
  • crowdsourcing
  • community accessibility
  • Web 2.0
  • content management systems

• Towards collaborative annotation for video accessibility

  Pierre-Antoine Champin, Benoît Encelle, Nicholas W. D. Evans, Magali O.-Beldame, Yannick Prié, Raphaël Troncy (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents the ACAV (Collaborative Annotation for Video Accessibility) project, a French research initiative involving Dailymotion, the University of Lyon (LIRIS), and EURECOM, aimed at making web video accessible to blind and deaf users thr…

  • video accessibility
  • audio description
  • captioning
  • crowdsourcing
  • speech recognition
  • Braille
  • multimodal interaction
  • semantic web
  • collaborative annotation

• Social accessibility: the challenge of improving web accessibility through collaboration

  Daisuke Sato, Masatomo Kobayashi, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents Social Accessibility, a collaborative project from IBM Research Tokyo that enlists volunteers to fix web accessibility problems reported by visually impaired users. The system works through a three-step process: blind users encoun…

  • crowdsourcing
  • screen readers
  • alternative text
  • visual impairment
  • social computing
  • collaborative accessibility
  • external metadata

• Farfalla Project: Browser-Based Accessibility Solutions

  Andrea Mangiatordi, Harpreet Singh Sareen (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents Farfalla, a free and open-source project from the University of Milano Bicocca that provides cloud-based assistive technology through the browser, eliminating the need for locally installed software. The core insight is that tradi…

  • assistive technology
  • cloud computing
  • web accessibility
  • accessibility tools
  • browser extension
  • low vision
  • text-to-speech
  • crowdsourcing
  • open source

• Crowdsourcing Correction of Speech Recognition Captioning Errors

  M. Wald (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper describes tools built around Synote, an award-winning web-based application from the University of Southampton, that enable crowdsourced correction of automatic speech recognition (ASR) captioning errors to make video content accessible at…

  • captioning
  • speech recognition
  • crowdsourcing
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • video accessibility
  • education accessibility
  • automatic speech recognition

• Alipi: A Framework for Re-Narrating Web Pages

  T. B. Dinesh, S. Uskudarli, Subramanya Sastry, Deepti Aggarwal, Venkatesh Choppella (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper introduces Alipi, a distributed and participatory framework for re-narrating web pages to make them more accessible to diverse audiences. The name "alipi" means "print illiterate" in Kannada and other Indian subcontinent languages, reflect…

  • social accessibility
  • web accessibility
  • crowdsourcing
  • localization
  • multilingual accessibility
  • collaborative accessibility
  • DOM manipulation

• Can a Blind Person Understand Your World?

  Chieko Asakawa (2014) — Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This keynote paper by Chieko Asakawa of IBM Research presents a vision for the next frontier of accessibility for blind people: moving from digital information access to real-world understanding through cognitive computing. Asakawa charts the exponen…

  • blindness
  • cognitive assistance
  • image recognition
  • computer vision
  • machine learning
  • crowdsourcing
  • assistive technology
  • navigation
  • augmented reality