Literature Reviews

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

• MySpeechWeb: software to facilitate the construction and deployment of speech applications on the web

  Richard A. Frost, Ali Karaki, David A. Dufour, Josh Greig, Rahmatullah Hafiz, Yue Shi, Shawn Daichendt, Shahriar Chandon, Justin Barolak, Randy J. Fortier (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This short paper presents MySpeechWeb, an open-source platform for creating and deploying voice-in/voice-out speech applications on the web. The authors identify a significant gap: despite the potential of speech interfaces to improve web access for …

  • speech interfaces
  • voice interaction
  • web accessibility
  • open source
  • assistive technology
  • screen readers
  • natural language processing

• Enriching Web Information Scent for Blind Users

  Markel Vigo, Barbara Leporini, Fabio Paternò (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper investigates whether annotating web links with accessibility scores of their target pages can improve navigation efficiency for blind screen reader users. The core idea draws on information foraging theory: just as sighted users follow vis…

  • web accessibility
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • information scent
  • information foraging
  • adaptive navigation
  • automated evaluation
  • web usability

• Including Accessibility Within and Beyond Undergraduate Computing Courses

  Annalu Waller, Vicki L. Hanson, David Sloan (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper describes the University of Dundee's approach to integrating accessibility and inclusive design throughout its entire four-year undergraduate computing curriculum, rather than treating accessibility as a standalone topic or elective module…

  • accessibility education
  • inclusive design
  • higher education
  • curriculum design
  • web accessibility
  • professional development
  • organizational accessibility

• How Much Does Expertise Matter? A Barrier Walkthrough Study with Experts and Non-Experts

  Yeliz Yesilada, Giorgio Brajnik, Simon Harper (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper investigates whether expertise matters in manual web accessibility evaluation by comparing results from 19 expert and 51 non-expert judges using the Barrier Walkthrough (BW) method. The BW method is an analytical technique based on heurist…

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility evaluation
  • barrier walkthrough
  • WCAG
  • evaluator effect
  • expertise
  • accessibility testing
  • research methodology

• 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

• Validity and Reliability of Web Accessibility Guidelines

  Giorgio Brajnik (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents an experiment measuring the validity and reliability of WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0 checkpoints when applied by human evaluators. The study recruited 35 young web developers with some accessibility knowledge from a university course and…

  • accessibility evaluation
  • WCAG
  • conformance testing
  • inter-rater reliability
  • web accessibility
  • guidelines

• Are Synthesized Video Descriptions Acceptable?

  Masatomo Kobayashi, Trisha O'Connell, Bryan Gould, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper from IBM Research Tokyo and WGBH National Center for Accessible Media investigates whether text-to-speech (TTS) synthesised narrations are an acceptable alternative to human-narrated audio descriptions for online videos. While accessibilit…

  • audio description
  • video accessibility
  • text-to-speech
  • speech synthesis
  • web accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • online video
  • extended description

• Assistive Web Browsing with Touch Interfaces

  Faisal Ahmed, Muhammad Asiful Islam, Yevgen Borodin, I. V. Ramakrishnan (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This demo paper from Stony Brook University proposes a touch-based directional navigation technique to improve web browsing for blind users on touch devices (iPhone, MacBook trackpad). The authors identify two key problems with Apple's VoiceOver touc…

  • web accessibility
  • touch interface
  • screen reader
  • VoiceOver
  • visual impairment
  • navigation
  • blind users

• Sasayaki: An Augmented Voice-Based Web Browsing Experience

  Shaojian Zhu, Daisuke Sato, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper introduces Sasayaki (meaning "whisper" in Japanese), an intelligent voice-based agent designed to augment voice browser navigation for users with visual impairments. The authors, from IBM Research Tokyo and UMBC, identify two key problems …

  • web accessibility
  • screen reader
  • voice browser
  • visual impairment
  • contextual support
  • intelligent agent
  • web navigation

• Testability and Validity of WCAG 2.0: The Expertise Effect

  Giorgio Brajnik, Yeliz Yesilada, Simon Harper (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper investigates the testability and validity of WCAG 2.0 success criteria through an empirical study with 22 accessibility experts and 27 non-experts (university students with 14 hours of accessibility training). Participants evaluated all 61…

  • WCAG 2.0
  • web accessibility
  • conformance review
  • evaluator effect
  • accessibility audit
  • guidelines
  • expertise
  • evaluation methodology