Literature Reviews

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

• Ability Heuristics for Conducting Accessibility Inspections

  Claire L. Mitchell, Junhan Kong, Jesse J. Martinez, Shaun K. Kane, Amy J. Ko, Alexis Hiniker, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Mitchell and colleagues develop and evaluate a set of nine 'ability heuristics' intended to let designers and developers — not just accessibility specialists — inspect interactive technology for accessibility problems. The authors argue that existing…

  • heuristic evaluation
  • ability-based design
  • accessibility inspection
  • accessibility evaluation
  • design methods
  • inspection methods
  • accessibility quality
  • design education

• How Designing for People With and Without Disabilities Shapes Student Design Thinking

  Kristen Shinohara, Cynthia L. Bennett, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2016) — ASSETS '16: Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This study investigates how requiring student designers to create technologies for both disabled and non-disabled users influences their understanding of accessibility and design thinking. Unlike typical disability-specific design approaches that pro…

  • accessibility education
  • design thinking
  • inclusive design
  • user-centered design
  • ableism
  • design education
  • Universal Design
  • participatory design

• Design for Social Accessibility Method Cards: Engaging Users and Reflecting on Social Scenarios for Accessible Design

  Kristen Shinohara, Cynthia L. Bennett, Wanda Pratt, Jacob O. Wobbrock (2020) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper introduces Design for Social Accessibility (DSA) method cards, a practical tool that helps designers incorporate social dimensions of accessibility into their work. The authors argue that most accessibility guidelines focus on functional a…

  • social accessibility
  • design methods
  • method cards
  • participatory design
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • inclusive design
  • design education