Literature Reviews

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

• Crosschecking the Mobile Web for People with Visual Impairments

  Luís Carriço, Rui Lopes, Rogério Bandeira (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper proposes a framework for evaluating mobile web accessibility for specific disability profiles by coherently merging three sets of guidelines: WCAG (web accessibility), W3C Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP), and disability classifications fr…

  • mobile accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • WCAG compliance
  • accessibility evaluation
  • web standards
  • user research

• WAI-ARIA Live Regions and HTML5

  Peter Thiessen (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper examines the interoperability of WAI-ARIA live regions with HTML5 semantic elements, testing whether screen readers can correctly handle dynamic DOM updates when live region attributes are applied to new HTML5 elements like section, nav, a…

  • WAI-ARIA
  • HTML5
  • screen readers
  • dynamic content
  • AJAX
  • web standards
  • accessibility testing
  • blind and low vision

• HapticRiaMaps: Towards Interactive Exploration of Web World Maps for the Visually Impaired

  Nikolaos Kaklanis, Konstantinos Votis, Panagiotis Moschonas, Dimitrios Tzovaras (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents HapticRiaMaps, a free open-source web application from the Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) in Greece that makes online 2D maps accessible to visually impaired users through haptic force feedback and audio sonific…

  • blind and low vision
  • haptic technology
  • accessible maps
  • sonification
  • multimodal interaction
  • navigation
  • assistive technology
  • spatial cognition

• Application of Content Adaptation in Web Accessibility for the Blind

  Pauli P. Y. Lai (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper proposes transforming web pages into hierarchical, numbered menu structures — modeled on Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRS) — so blind users can navigate content by pressing number keys rather than listening sequentially through ent…

  • blind and low vision
  • content adaptation
  • screen readers
  • mobile accessibility
  • web page segmentation
  • navigation
  • DOM manipulation

• AccessibleNews DAISY: Newspapers in DAISY

  Gaurang Kanvinde, Saurabh Gupta (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents AccessibleNews DAISY, software developed by Accessible Systems in Mumbai, India, that automatically converts web-based newspaper and magazine content into DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) digital talking books. The au…

  • DAISY
  • blind and low vision
  • assistive technology
  • news accessibility
  • digital talking books
  • RSS
  • Global South accessibility
  • content accessibility

• Accessibility Approach to Adopting Web Technologies

  Neil King, Damien McCormack (2011) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents findings from a comprehensive Australian Government-commissioned study by Vision Australia into the accessibility of the PDF format for people with disabilities. The three-phase research combined user consultation (focus groups wi…

  • PDF accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • blind and low vision
  • screen readers
  • document accessibility
  • government accessibility
  • user testing
  • accessibility policy

• Doing Math: Mathematics Accessibility Issues

  Nancy Alajarmeh (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This student award paper argues that mathematics accessibility for visually impaired students must move beyond rendering (displaying and reading mathematical notation) to support "doing the math" — the active manipulation of algebraic expressions, eq…

  • mathematical accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • STEM accessibility
  • education accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • MathML

• Universal and Ubiquitous Web Access with Capti

  Yevgen Borodin, Andrii Sovyak, Alexander Dimitriyadi, Yury Puzis, Valentyn Melnyk, Faisal Ahmed, Glenn Dausch, I. V. Ramakrishnan (2012) — Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This demo paper presents Capti, a cross-platform web browsing application designed to make web access more usable for both blind and sighted users. Capti addresses two interconnected problems: the inefficiency of traditional screen readers for findin…

  • screen readers
  • assistive technology
  • blind and low vision
  • text-to-speech
  • universal design
  • mobile accessibility
  • web accessibility

• A Syntactic Analysis of Accessibility to a Corpus of Statistical Graphs

  Leo Ferres, Petro Verkhogliad, Livia Sumegi, Louis Boucher, Martin Lachance, Gitte Lindgaard (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from Carleton University and Statistics Canada tackles a persistent accessibility challenge: making statistical graphs accessible to blind and visually impaired users. The authors analysed a corpus of 120 real-world statistical graphs from…

  • data visualization
  • graph accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • alt text
  • knowledge representation
  • automated accessibility
  • statistical graphics

• VizWiz: Nearly Real-Time Answers to Visual Questions

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Chandrika Jayant, Hanjie Ji, Greg Little, Andrew Miller, Robert C. Miller, Aubrey Tatarowicz, Brandyn White, Samuel White, Tom Yeh (2010) — Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper introduces VizWiz, a pioneering mobile application that enables blind and low-vision people to get nearly real-time answers to visual questions by connecting their smartphone cameras to remote paid workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Users …

  • blind and low vision
  • crowdsourcing
  • assistive technology
  • mobile accessibility
  • human computation
  • visual question answering
  • independence
  • smartphone