Literature Reviews

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

• WearWrite: Crowd-Assisted Writing from Smartwatches

  Michael Nebeling, Alexandra To, Anhong Guo, Adrian A. de Freitas, Jaime Teevan, Steven P. Dow, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2016) — Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2016)

  WearWrite is a system that enables users to write documents from their smartwatches by leveraging crowd workers to translate ideas into text. The system addresses the fundamental limitation that smartwatches have severely constrained input/output — t…

  • crowdsourcing
  • wearable technology
  • human computation
  • collaborative writing
  • mobile accessibility
  • conversational interface

• EasySnap: Real-time Audio Feedback for Blind Photography

  Samuel White, Hanjie Ji, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2010) — Adjunct Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2010)

  This demonstration paper presents EasySnap, an iPhone application that enables blind and low-vision users to take high-quality photographs by providing real-time audio feedback as they point their camera phones. The system addresses a key barrier: bl…

  • blind and low vision
  • computer vision
  • mobile accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • photography
  • auditory interface
  • non-visual interfaces

• Accessibility by Demonstration: Enabling End Users to Guide Developers to Web Accessibility Solutions

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Jeremy T. Brudvik, Bernie Zhang (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper introduces Accessibility by Demonstration (ABD), a novel approach to accessibility evaluation that lets assistive technology users record the accessibility problems they encounter as shareable, replayable demonstrations and send them direc…

  • web accessibility
  • accessibility testing
  • screen readers
  • blind and low vision
  • accessibility evaluation
  • developer tools
  • user research

• Mining Web Interactions to Automatically Create Mash-Ups

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Ryan S. Kaminsky, Jeffrey Nichols (2009) — Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2009)

  This paper introduces TX2, a Firefox browser extension that automatically creates meta-search mash-ups by mining the web interactions of multiple users to discover relationships between query forms on different websites. The deep web — information ac…

  • web accessibility
  • web development
  • information retrieval
  • end-user programming
  • personalization
  • user interface design

• Evaluating Existing Audio CAPTCHAs and an Interface Optimized for Non-Visual Use

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Anna C. Cavender (2009) — Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009)

  This paper presents the first large-scale evaluation of audio CAPTCHAs — the purportedly accessible alternative to visual CAPTCHAs — revealing that they are dramatically more difficult for both blind and sighted users. The study gathered 10 types of …

  • blind and low vision
  • web accessibility
  • screen readers
  • CAPTCHA
  • authentication
  • non-visual interfaces
  • usability testing
  • accessibility barriers

• Answering Visual Questions with Conversational Crowd Assistants

  Walter S. Lasecki, Phyo Thiha, Yu Zhong, Erin Brady, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2013)

  This paper introduces Chorus:View, a system that enables blind users to get visual questions answered through continuous conversational interaction with multiple crowd workers viewing a live video stream from the user's mobile device. The system addr…

  • blind and low vision
  • crowdsourcing
  • human computation
  • assistive technology
  • visual assistance
  • VizWiz
  • conversational interface
  • mobile accessibility

• Real-Time Crowd Labeling for Deployable Activity Recognition

  Walter S. Lasecki, Young Chol Song, Henry Kautz, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2013) — Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2013)

  Legion:AR is a system that provides deployable activity recognition by combining real-time crowd labeling with automatic recognition using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The system addresses a critical limitation of current activity recognition: automa…

  • activity recognition
  • crowdsourcing
  • human computation
  • machine learning
  • aging in place
  • cognitive accessibility
  • smart environments
  • privacy
  • assistive technology

• Multimodal Summarization of Complex Sentences

  Naushad UzZaman, Jeffrey P. Bigham, James F. Allen (2011) — Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2011)

  This paper introduces the concept of multimodal summarization (MMS) for complex sentences — automatically generating diagrams that combine pictures, simplified compressed text, and structural layout to help people understand difficult text. The syste…

  • cognitive accessibility
  • reading accessibility
  • natural language processing
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • text simplification
  • image accessibility
  • multimodal interaction

• Real-Time Captioning by Non-Experts with Legion Scribe

  Walter S. Lasecki, Christopher D. Miller, Raja Kushalnagar, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2013)

  This short paper introduces Legion Scribe (Scribe), a system that enables 3-5 non-expert typists to collectively caption speech in real time, achieving accuracy approaching that of a professional stenographer at 20-30% of the cost. The system address…

  • real-time captioning
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • crowdsourcing
  • human computation
  • assistive technology
  • captioning

• Accessible Crowdwork? Understanding the Value in and Challenge of Microtask Employment for People with Disabilities

  Kathryn Zyskowski, Meredith Ringel Morris, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Mary L. Gray, Shaun K. Kane (2015) — Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW 2015)

  This paper presents the first formal study of crowdworkers who have disabilities, using a mixed-methods approach combining in-depth interviews with 17 people (8 disabled crowdworkers and 9 job coaches for people with disabilities) and a survey of 631…

  • crowdsourcing
  • disability employment
  • workplace accessibility
  • digital inclusion
  • assistive technology
  • accessibility barriers
  • Mechanical Turk
  • disability rights