Literature Reviews

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

• Investigating Sighted Users' Browsing Behaviour to Assist Web Accessibility

  Eleni Michailidou, Simon Harper, Sean Bechhofer (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents an eye tracking study investigating how sighted users browse web pages, with the goal of using these insights to improve web accessibility for visually impaired users. The core argument is that understanding sighted users' visual …

  • eye tracking
  • web accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • web design
  • visual complexity
  • screen readers
  • user research
  • browsing behavior
  • transcoding

• RouteCheckr: Personalized Multicriteria Routing for Mobility Impaired Pedestrians

  Thorsten Völkel, Gerhard Weber (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents RouteCheckr, a client/server system for personalised pedestrian navigation that calculates routes optimised for multiple criteria relevant to mobility impaired users. The authors identify three key shortcomings of existing navigat…

  • navigation
  • wayfinding
  • wheelchair accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • mobility
  • personalization
  • crowdsourcing
  • algorithms
  • pedestrian navigation
  • urban accessibility

• Tactile Chart Generation Tool

  Cagatay Goncu, Kim Marriott (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a Java application that automatically generates tactile bar and pie charts from raw data values provided in a formatted text file. Developed in collaboration with Vision Australia, the tool addresses the time-consuming and expensi…

  • tactile graphics
  • data visualization
  • visual impairment
  • braille
  • accessible publishing
  • education
  • assistive technology
  • design tools

• A Camera Phone Based Currency Reader for the Visually Impaired

  Xu Liu (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a camera phone-based system for identifying U.S. paper currency denominations for people who are blind or visually impaired. The work addresses a specific accessibility gap: unlike currencies in many other countries, U.S. paper bi…

  • visual impairment
  • computer vision
  • assistive technology
  • mobile accessibility
  • object recognition
  • financial accessibility
  • machine learning
  • independent living

• PowerUp: An Accessible Virtual World

  Shari Trewin, Vicki L. Hanson, Mark R. Laff, Anna Cavender (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper describes the design and validation of accessibility features for PowerUp, an IBM-developed multiplayer 3D virtual world educational game aimed at middle school students. The researchers were tasked with making the game usable by players w…

  • game accessibility
  • virtual reality
  • visual impairment
  • blindness
  • cognitive accessibility
  • motor disability
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • inclusive design
  • navigation
  • self-voicing interface
  • sonification

• PhotoTacs: An Image-Based Cell Phone Interface

  Michael J. Astrauskas (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents PhotoTacs, a simplified image-based cell phone interface designed to help people with cognitive or visual impairments navigate their phone contacts and make calls. The author begins by identifying the core problem: as cellular pho…

  • cognitive accessibility
  • mobile accessibility
  • assistive technology
  • visual impairment
  • user interface design
  • cognitive disabilities
  • image-based interface
  • simplified interface

• Refreshable tactile graphics applied to schoolbook illustrations for students with visual impairment

  Grégory Petit, Aude Dufresne, Vincent Levesque, Vincent Hayward, Nicole Trudeau (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents research on making schoolbook illustrations accessible to students with visual impairments using a refreshable tactile display system. The system combines the STReSS2 (Stimulator of Tactile Receptors by Skin Stretch), a device tha…

  • tactile graphics
  • visual impairment
  • education
  • haptic technology
  • refreshable displays
  • children
  • multimodal interaction
  • STEM accessibility
  • inclusive education

• A user evaluation of the SADIe transcoder

  Darren Lunn, Sean Bechhofer, Simon Harper (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents a user evaluation of SADIe (Structural-Semantics for Accessibility and Device Independence), a system that uses Semantic Web technologies to make web pages more accessible to screen reader users. The core problem SADIe addresses i…

  • web accessibility
  • screen readers
  • semantic web
  • transcoding
  • visual impairment
  • ontology
  • web content transformation
  • CSS
  • assistive technology

• TAIG: textually accessible information graphics

  Seniz Demir (2008) — Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This short paper presents TAIG (Textually Accessible Information Graphics), a system designed to make bar charts and other information graphics accessible to people with visual impairments by generating coherent natural language summaries. TAIG exten…

  • data visualization
  • graph summarization
  • screen readers
  • visual impairment
  • natural language generation
  • bar charts
  • alternative text
  • information graphics

• TextSL: A Command-Based Virtual World Interface for the Visually Impaired

  Eelke Folmer, Bei Yuan, Dave Carr, Manjari Sapre (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents TextSL, a text-based client for the virtual world Second Life that enables access via screen readers. Second Life is a non-game virtual world where users control avatars to explore 3D environments, socialise with others, and inter…

  • virtual worlds
  • visual impairment
  • screen readers
  • game accessibility
  • social interaction
  • command-line interface
  • Second Life
  • alternative interface