Literature Reviews

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

• Designing Embodied Musical Interaction for Children with Autism

  Grazia Ragone (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

  This paper presents OSMoSIS (Observation of Social Motor Synchrony with an Interactive System), an interactive musical system designed to support embodied musical interaction for children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) during music therapy ses…

  • autism
  • music therapy
  • embodied interaction
  • motion capture
  • sonification
  • social motor synchrony
  • children
  • assistive technology
  • Microsoft Kinect

• Auditory feedback to compensate audible instructions to support people with visual impairment

  Gabriele Galimberti (2021) — ASSETS '21: The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This doctoral consortium extended abstract addresses a practical challenge faced by people with visual impairments who rely on auditory feedback from mobile devices: background noise in real-world mobility contexts can mask device audio output, degra…

  • visual impairment
  • auditory feedback
  • sonification
  • mobile accessibility
  • navigation
  • noise compensation
  • text-to-speech

• COVID-19 Highlights the Issues Facing Blind and Visually Impaired People in Accessing Data on the Web

  Alexa F. Siu, Danyang Fan, Gene S-H Kim, Hrishikesh V. Rao, Xavier Vazquez, Sile O'Modhrain, Sean Follmer (2021) — Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This mixed-methods study examines how blind and visually impaired (BVI) people experienced accessing data-driven information on the web during the COVID-19 pandemic — a period when data visualizations such as infection curves, maps of hotspots, and t…

  • data visualization
  • blind and low vision
  • web accessibility
  • COVID-19
  • screen readers
  • sonification
  • data literacy
  • accessible data
  • information access

• Multi-touch Exploration and Sonification of Line Segments

  Dragan Ahmetovic, Cristian Bernareggi, Sergio Mascetti, Federico Pini (2021) — Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents SoundLines, a mobile app designed to help children with visual impairments develop spatial exploration skills through touchscreen interaction coupled with audio (sonification) feedback. The app is structured as a game where a kitt…

  • visual impairment
  • sonification
  • spatial cognition
  • mobile accessibility
  • tactile accessibility
  • education accessibility
  • game accessibility

• CodeWalk: Facilitating Shared Awareness in Mixed-Ability Collaborative Software Development

  Venkatesh Potluri, Maulishree Pandey, Andrew Begel, Michael Barnett, Scott Reitherman (2022) — Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22)

  This paper presents CodeWalk, a set of accessibility features added to Microsoft's Live Share extension for Visual Studio Code, designed to make remote synchronous code collaboration accessible to blind or visually impaired (BVI) developers. The COVI…

  • blind developers
  • collaborative programming
  • IDE accessibility
  • screen readers
  • workspace awareness
  • pair programming
  • VS Code
  • sonification

• Uncovering Visually Impaired Gamers' Preferences for Spatial Awareness Tools Within Video Games

  Vishnu Nair, Shao-en Ma, Ricardo E. Gonzalez Penuela, Yicheng He, Karen Lin, Mason Hayes, Hannah Huddleston, Matthew Donnelly, Brian A. Smith (2022) — Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22)

  This paper investigates how visually impaired players (VIPs) gain spatial awareness within 3D video games by comparing four leading spatial awareness tool (SAT) approaches. The researchers built Dungeon Escape, a 3D third-person adventure game using …

  • game accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • blindness
  • spatial awareness
  • audio navigation
  • 3D audio
  • sonification
  • echolocation
  • tactile map
  • user study

• IMAGE: A Deployment Framework for Creating Multimodal Experiences of Web Graphics

  Juliette Regimbal, Jeffrey R. Blum, Jeremy R. Cooperstock (2022) — Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This short paper from McGill University introduces IMAGE (Internet Multimodal Access to Graphical Exploration), an open-source framework for converting web graphics into accessible multimodal outputs including audio, haptic, and text representations …

  • multimodal
  • web graphics
  • image accessibility
  • haptic feedback
  • sonification
  • open source
  • blindness and low vision
  • screen readers
  • assistive technology

• Cripping Data Visualizations: Crip Technoscience as a Critical Lens for Designing Digital Access

  Stacy Hsueh, Beatrice Vincenzi, Akshata Murdeshwar, Marianela Ciolfi Felice (2023) — ASSETS 2023: The 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper applies crip technoscience as a critical, generative framework for rethinking how accessible data visualizations are designed. The authors argue that current approaches to visualization accessibility largely treat access as a technical pro…

  • data visualization
  • crip technoscience
  • crip theory
  • blind and low vision
  • speculative design
  • critical disability studies
  • alternative text
  • tactile graphics
  • sonification
  • accessible design

• Understanding and Improving Drilled-Down Information Extraction from Online Data Visualizations for Screen-Reader Users

  Ather Sharif, Andrew M. Zhang, Katharina Reinecke, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A '23)

  This extended abstract presents enhancements to VoxLens, an open-source JavaScript plug-in that improves the accessibility of online data visualizations for screen-reader users (SRUs) through a multimodal approach. Over 7.6 million people in the Unit…

  • screen readers
  • data visualization accessibility
  • alternative text
  • sonification
  • blind and low vision
  • web accessibility
  • non-visual interaction
  • information retrieval
  • accessible maps

• Authoring Web-accessible Mathematical Diagrams (Short Paper)

  David Austin, Volker Sorge (2023) — Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This short paper presents a novel XML-based language for authoring accessible mathematical diagrams, targeting both visually impaired (VI) and sighted authors. Mathematical diagrams are essential for STEM subjects yet remain overwhelmingly inaccessib…

  • STEM accessibility
  • mathematical diagrams
  • SVG accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • sonification
  • screen readers
  • tactile graphics
  • authoring tools