Literature Reviews

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

• Annotation-Based Transcoding for Nonvisual Web Access

  Chieko Asakawa, Hironobu Takagi (2000) — Proceedings of the Fourth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '00)

  This companion paper to the same authors' transcoding proxy paper (also at Assets '00) provides a detailed technical description of the annotation-based component of their IBM Japan transcoding system. The core problem addressed is that modern web pa…

  • web accessibility
  • screen reader
  • transcoding
  • non-visual access
  • blindness and low vision
  • annotations
  • content adaptation
  • web navigation
  • crowdsourcing
  • authoring tools

• Reusable Game Interfaces for People with Disabilities

  Javier Torrente (2012) — Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012)

  This doctoral consortium paper proposes that creating specialized, reusable accessibility tools for game developers can significantly reduce the cost and effort of making games accessible to people with disabilities. The author argues that while game…

  • game accessibility
  • serious games
  • audio games
  • eyes-free interaction
  • 3D audio
  • game development tools
  • reusable components
  • Android
  • authoring tools

• Say It All: Feedback for Improving Non-Visual Presentation Accessibility

  Yi-Hao Peng, JiWoong Jang, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Amy Pavel (2021) — Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21)

  This paper addresses the widespread problem of inaccessible slide-based presentations for blind and visually impaired audiences. When presenters fail to verbally describe the visual content on their slides — text, images, diagrams, graphs, and videos…

  • presentation accessibility
  • slides
  • audio description
  • blind and low vision
  • real-time feedback
  • authoring tools
  • non-visual access

• Rescribe: Authoring and Automatically Editing Audio Descriptions

  Amy Pavel, Gabriel Reyes, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2020) — Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '20)

  This paper introduces Rescribe, a tool that helps authors create and refine audio descriptions for videos. Audio descriptions make video content accessible to blind and visually impaired viewers by narrating important visual information during gaps i…

  • audio description
  • video accessibility
  • blind and low vision
  • NLP
  • sentence compression
  • authoring tools
  • media accessibility

• Diffscriber: Describing Visual Design Changes to Support Mixed-Ability Collaborative Presentation Authoring

  Yi-Hao Peng, Jason Wu, Jeffrey Bigham, Amy Pavel (2022) — Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)

  This paper presents Diffscriber, a system that identifies and describes visual design changes made to slide presentations, enabling blind and visually impaired (BVI) presenters to meaningfully participate in collaborative slide authoring with sighted…

  • blind and low vision
  • mixed-ability collaboration
  • presentation accessibility
  • authoring tools
  • screen readers
  • image descriptions
  • change detection

• Automatically producing IMS AccessForAll Metadata

  Matteo Boni, Sara Cenni, Silvia Mirri, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Paola Salomoni (2006) — Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the University of Bologna presents the ACCMDBuilder, a software component that automatically generates IMS AccessForAll Metadata (ACCMD) descriptions for accessible learning objects (LOs). The IMS AccessForAll specification provides a…

  • e-learning accessibility
  • metadata
  • learning objects
  • multimedia accessibility
  • authoring tools
  • SCORM
  • content alternatives

• Using a CMS to Create Fully Accessible Websites

  Sébastien Rainville-Pitt, Jean-Marie D'Amour (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This demonstration paper presents Edimaster Plus, a content management system developed over five years by Netic Hypermedia Inc. in Quebec, Canada, designed from the ground up to generate fully accessible websites meeting all three WAI priority level…

  • web accessibility
  • content management systems
  • authoring tools
  • WCAG compliance
  • assistive technology
  • screen readers
  • accessible by default
  • semantic HTML

• Accessibility in Non-Professional Web Authoring Tools: A Missed Web 2.0 Opportunity?

  Christopher Power, Helen Petrie (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the University of York evaluates the accessibility of Apple's iWeb, a non-professional web authoring tool representative of a new generation of Web 2.0 design applications aimed at non-technical users creating personal websites, blogs…

  • web accessibility
  • authoring tools
  • WCAG compliance
  • Web 2.0
  • semantic HTML
  • alternative text
  • screen readers
  • content creation
  • accessible by default

• Accessible Blog Posts with Windows Live Writer

  Cynthia Shelly, Becky Pezely (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This short paper from Microsoft describes how Windows Live Writer, a desktop blogging application installed on over 20 million machines with approximately 100,000 daily active users, was designed to produce accessible HTML output without requiring au…

  • web accessibility
  • authoring tools
  • blogging
  • semantic HTML
  • alternative text
  • WCAG compliance
  • content creation
  • accessible by default

• The Accessibility Kit for SharePoint: A Community-Based Approach to Web Accessibility

  Robert B. Yonaitis, Dana Louise Simberkoff, Kurt A. Mueffelmann, Cynthia Shelly (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper describes the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS), an open-source add-on developed by HiSoftware in collaboration with Microsoft to bring WCAG 1.0 AA conformance to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). SharePoint was at the t…

  • web accessibility
  • content management systems
  • organizational accessibility
  • WCAG compliance
  • open source
  • community
  • enterprise software
  • authoring tools