Literature Reviews

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

• NarrAid: Supporting Storytelling of People with Aphasia via Generative Visual Scene Displays

  Xiangfei Hu, Xiuqi Zheng, Qi Liu, Zejian Li, Ying Zhang, Lu Wang, Xipei Ren (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’26)

  NarrAid is a generative AI-driven Visual Scene Display (VSD) system designed to support storytelling, not just basic wants and needs, for people with aphasia (PWA). The authors argue that existing AAC tools, including traditional VSDs, support functi…

  • aphasia
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • visual scene display
  • storytelling
  • generative AI
  • large language models
  • text-to-image
  • human-AI co-creation
  • assistive technology

• Before the Technological Fix: Scoping AI and AAC for Social Futures

  Seray B Ibrahim, Tom Griffiths, Michael Clarke, Simon Judge, Petr Slovak, Graham Pullin, Jeff Higginbotham (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26)

  Ibrahim and colleagues - a multi-institution team of researchers working at the intersection of AAC, HCI, and disability studies - argue that the recent surge of HCI work applying AI to Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is drifting awa…

  • AAC
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • artificial intelligence
  • scoping review
  • social interaction
  • accessibility theory
  • critical disability studies

• Speech AI for All: The What, How, and Who of Measurement

  Kimi Wenzel, Alisha Pradhan, Maria Teleki, Tobias M. Weinberg, Robin Netzorg, Alyssa Hillary Zisk, Anna Seo Gyeong Choi, Jingjin Li, Raja Kushalnagar, Colin Lea, Abraham Glasser, Christian Vogler, Ly Xinzhen M. Zhangsun Brown, Nan Bernstein Ratner, Allison Koenecke, Karen Nakamura, Shaomei Wu (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26) — Workshop

  This CHI 2026 workshop proposal — the second in the organisers' 'Speech AI for All' series — assembles 17 researchers, practitioners, and community advocates to tackle a specific downstream problem in fair and accessible speech AI: measurement. The m…

  • speech AI
  • automatic speech recognition
  • speech diversity
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • disfluency
  • stuttering
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • algorithmic fairness
  • accessibility research
  • workshop
  • AI FATE

• Giving Meaning to Movements: Challenges and Opportunities in Expanding Communication by Pairing Unaided AAC with Speech Generated Messages

  Imran Kabir, Sharon Ann Redmon, Lynn R. Elko, Kevin Williams, Mitchell A. Case, Dawn J. Sowers, Krista Wilkinson, Syed Masum Billah (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Kabir and colleagues tackle a long-standing split in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC): aided AAC — speech-generating devices, symbol boards, tablet apps — produces standardised, intelligible output but is slow, visually demanding, and…

  • AAC
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • motor impairment
  • speech impairment
  • wearable technology
  • IMU
  • gesture recognition
  • machine learning
  • personalization
  • participatory design
  • datasets

• Do-It-Yourself AAC: Co-Designing User-Programmable AI Communication Tools with People with Aphasia

  Jong Ho Lee, Stephanie Valencia (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Lee and Valencia explore how people with aphasia (PWA) can become designers of their own AI-powered augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) tools rather than users of rigid, pre-built systems. The authors note that aphasia, a language disord…

  • aphasia
  • AAC
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • end-user programming
  • generative AI
  • large language models
  • participatory design
  • co-design
  • visual programming
  • tangible interaction
  • cognitive accessibility
  • speech and language
  • stroke
  • assistive technology
  • personalization

• Comparing speaker-dependent and speaker-adaptive acoustic models for recognizing dysarthric speech

  Frank Rudzicz (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '07)

  This short ASSETS 2007 poster from Frank Rudzicz at the University of Toronto compares two strategies for building automatic speech recognition (ASR) acoustic models that work for people with dysarthria — a set of motor speech disorders that produces…

  • dysarthria
  • automatic speech recognition
  • acoustic model
  • speaker adaptation
  • hidden Markov model
  • phoneme
  • speech intelligibility
  • motor speech disorders
  • machine learning
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • speech accessibility
  • voice interface

• SIBYLLE: a system for alternative communication adapting to the context and its user

  Tonio Wandmacher, Jean-Yves Antoine, Franck Poirier (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '07)

  This paper describes the latest version of SIBYLLE, an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system developed at the Université François Rabelais and the Université Européenne de Bretagne for users with severe motor and speech impairments …

  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • AAC
  • word prediction
  • virtual keyboard
  • single switch
  • scanning
  • latent semantic analysis
  • language model
  • keystroke saving rate
  • text-to-speech
  • locked-in syndrome
  • cerebral palsy
  • rehabilitation
  • multilingual accessibility
  • natural language processing

• The Ethnographically Informed Participatory Design of a PDA Application to Support Communication

  Rhian Davies, Skip Marcella, Joanna McGrenere, Barbara Purves (2004) — Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets 04)

  This paper describes an ethnographically informed participatory design process for creating a PDA-based file management system to support communication for a person with aphasia. The research was conducted at the University of British Columbia with o…

  • aphasia
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • participatory design
  • ethnography
  • mobile technology
  • assistive technology
  • communication disability
  • PDA
  • file management

• A Predictive Blissymbolic to English Translation System

  Annalu Waller, Kris Jack (2002) — Proceedings of the Fifth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '02)

  This paper addresses a fundamental limitation of Blissymbolics in electronic AAC: while Blissymbol users can compose messages by selecting symbols, converting those symbol sequences into grammatically correct English is non-trivial. Blissymbolics is …

  • AAC
  • Blissymbolics
  • natural language processing
  • symbol communication
  • predictive text
  • communication rate
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • translation
  • language generation

• ICU-Talk, A Communication Aid for Intubated Intensive Care Patients

  F. MacAulay, A. Judson, M. Etchels, S. Ashraf, I. W. Ricketts, A. Waller, J. K. Brodie, N. Alm, A. Warden, A. J. Shearer, B. Gordon (2002) — Proceedings of the Fifth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets 02)

  This paper describes ICU-Talk, a computer-based communication aid developed specifically for intubated patients in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) who are temporarily unable to speak due to breathing tubes inserted through their mouth or throat.…

  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • AAC
  • intensive care
  • intubation
  • hospital communication
  • touch screen
  • switch access
  • patient communication