Literature Reviews

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

• Automated tactile graphics translation: in the field

  Chandrika Jayant, Matt Renzelmann, Dana Wen, Satria Krisnandi, Richard Ladner, Dan Comden (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper describes two years of field work extending the Tactile Graphics Assistant (TGA), a system developed at the University of Washington to automate the translation of figures from mathematics, science, and engineering (STEM) textbooks into em…

  • tactile graphics
  • Braille
  • STEM accessibility
  • blindness and low vision
  • image processing
  • machine learning
  • OCR
  • automated alternative formats
  • mathematical accessibility
  • accessible publishing

• Dual Educational Electronic Textbooks: The Starlight Platform

  Dimitris Grammenos, Anthony Savidis, Yannis Georgalis, Themistoklis Bourdenas, Constantine Stephanidis (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) in Crete, Greece presents Starlight, a software platform for creating and reading multimodal interactive electronic textbooks that provide a Dual User Interface — an interface …

  • accessible publishing
  • electronic textbook
  • blind students
  • inclusive education
  • dual user interface
  • braille display
  • text-to-speech
  • non-visual interaction
  • multimodal interaction
  • earcons
  • educational technology

• VoxBoox: A System for Automatic Generation of Interactive Talking Books

  Aanchal Jain, Gopal Gupta (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This poster paper from the University of Texas at Dallas presents VoxBoox, a system that automatically converts HTML-coded digital books into interactive talking books accessible via telephone. The system works by translating HTML pages into VoiceXML…

  • talking books
  • VoiceXML
  • aural navigation
  • visual impairment
  • blind users
  • HTML transformation
  • text-to-speech
  • accessible publishing

• Automating Tactile Graphics Translation

  Richard E. Ladner, Melody Y. Ivory, Rajesh Rao, Sheryl Burgstahler, Dan Comden, Sangyun Hahn, Matthew Renzelmann, Satria Krisnandi, Mahalakshmi Ramasamy, Beverly Slabosky, Andrew Martin, Amelia Lacenski, Stuart Olsen, Dmitri Groce (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper addresses the critical shortage of tactile graphics available to blind students in mathematics, science, and engineering (MSE) courses. Postsecondary science textbooks may have images on half their pages — sometimes up to 500 images per bo…

  • tactile graphics
  • braille
  • STEM accessibility
  • image processing
  • machine learning
  • visual impairment
  • assistive technology
  • automation
  • accessible publishing

• Digital Talking Books on a PC: A Usability Evaluation of the Prototype DAISY Playback Software

  Sarah Morley (1998) — Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This paper describes the design and usability evaluation of the first PC-based DAISY (Digital Audio-Based Information System) playback software, developed at the request of the Swedish Braille and Talking Book Library. The DAISY system represented a …

  • DAISY
  • digital talking book
  • usability testing
  • blind and low vision
  • auditory navigation
  • accessible publishing
  • structured audio
  • screen reader

• 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

• Increasing access to information for the print disabled through electronic documents in SGML

  Bart Bauwens, Jan Engelen, Filip Evenepoel, Chris Tobin, Tom Wesley (1994) — Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This paper describes work by the CAPS Consortium (Communication and Access to Information for People with Special Needs), an EU-funded project, and ICADD (International Committee on Accessible Document Design) to build accessibility into SGML (Standa…

  • document accessibility
  • SGML
  • structured documents
  • print disability
  • braille
  • large print
  • standards
  • accessible publishing
  • European accessibility

• ChattyBooks and ChattyBook Service

  Masakazu Suzuki, Katsuhito Yamaguchi (2017) — Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This demonstration paper presents ChattyBooks, a Windows application that converts STEM content in DAISY/accessible EPUB3 format into audio-embedded HTML5 with JavaScript, enabling playback in any web browser on any platform without requiring special…

  • STEM accessibility
  • DAISY
  • EPUB
  • MathML
  • mathematics accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • blindness
  • dyslexia
  • text-to-speech
  • OCR
  • accessible publishing
  • e-textbooks
  • HTML5
  • JavaScript
  • PDF accessibility
  • SVG
  • Japan
  • education accessibility

• Making Legacy Digital Content Accessible at Source

  Sankalan Pal Chowdhary, Dipendra Manocha, M. Balakrishnan, Akashdeep Bansal, Himanshu Garg (2019) — Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This demonstration paper presents a toolset for converting legacy-encoded Devanagari text to Unicode within Adobe InDesign, addressing a significant accessibility barrier for Indian language content. Despite Unicode being published in 1991, vast amou…

  • Unicode
  • legacy encoding
  • accessible publishing
  • Devanagari
  • India
  • screen reader
  • digital inclusion
  • educational content
  • InDesign
  • EPUB

• Personalization in the Interactive EPUB 3 Reading Experience: Accessibility Issues for Screen Reader Users

  Barbara Leporini, Clara Meattini (2019) — Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates the accessibility of interactive EPUB 3 digital books when accessed via screen readers. The authors designed and developed a multimedia, interactive EPUB 3 prototype — a digital guide to Sienese cuisine featuring 8 recipe chap…

  • EPUB
  • accessible publishing
  • screen reader
  • digital books
  • personalization
  • WAI-ARIA
  • visual impairment
  • assistive technology
  • VoiceOver
  • JAWS