Literature Reviews

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

• Equipping designers by simulating the effects of visual and hearing impairments

  Joy Goodman-Deane, Patrick M. Langdon, P. John Clarkson, Nicholas H.M. Caldwell, Ahmed M. Sarhan (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This short Assets '07 demonstration paper from the Cambridge Engineering Design Centre describes a software simulator built to help designers — especially product and communications designers, not just web designers — understand the effects of common…

  • inclusive design
  • design tools
  • simulation
  • visual impairment
  • hearing impairment
  • empathy tools
  • cataract
  • macular degeneration
  • colour blindness
  • loudness recruitment

• 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

• UIClip: A Data-driven Model for Assessing User Interface Design

  Jason Wu, Yi-Hao Peng, Xin Yue Amanda Li, Amanda Swearngin, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Jeffrey Nichols (2024) — Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '24)

  This paper introduces UIClip, a computational model that automatically assesses UI design quality and visual relevance from a screenshot and natural language description. Built on OpenAI's CLIP B/32 architecture (151 million parameters), UIClip is fi…

  • UI design
  • machine learning
  • design quality assessment
  • computer vision
  • CLIP
  • visual design
  • design tools
  • user interface
  • automated evaluation

• ACE: A Colour Palette Design Tool for Balancing Aesthetics and Accessibility

  Garreth W. Tigwell, David R. Flatla, Neil D. Archibald (2017) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents ACE (Accessible Colour Evaluator), an online tool designed to help web developers and designers balance aesthetic preferences with accessibility requirements when choosing website color palettes. The research addresses a significa…

  • color accessibility
  • colour vision deficiency
  • color blindness
  • web design
  • design tools
  • WCAG
  • contrast ratio
  • user-centered design
  • accessibility testing

• A Demonstration of Molder: An Accessible Design Tool for Tactile Maps

  Lei Shi, Yuhang Zhao, Elizabeth Kupferstein, Shiri Azenkot (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper presents Molder, an accessible design tool that enables teachers of the visually impaired (TVIs) and orientation and mobility (O&M) specialists to create 3D printed tactile maps without requiring professional 3D modeling skil…

  • tactile maps
  • tactile graphics
  • 3D printing
  • visual impairment
  • orientation and mobility
  • tangible interaction
  • design tools
  • accessible authoring
  • braille

• Still Not Readable? An Interactive Tool for Recommending Color Pairs with Sufficient Contrast based on Existing Visual Designs

  Fredrik Hansen, Josef Jan Krivan, Frode Eika Sandnes (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This demonstration paper presents a web-based color contrast tool that goes beyond the pass/fail validation of existing contrast checkers by actively recommending how to fix insufficient color contrast while preserving the designer's original visual …

  • color contrast
  • low vision
  • web design
  • design tools
  • readability
  • accessibility testing
  • WCAG compliance

• Adee: Bringing Accessibility Right Inside Design Tools

  Samine Hadadi (2021) — The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2021)

  This extended abstract introduces Adee, an accessibility testing plugin that integrates directly into popular design platforms — Adobe XD, Figma, and Sketch — to make accessibility checking a seamless part of the design workflow rather than an aftert…

  • design tools
  • color contrast
  • color blindness
  • touch target size
  • alternative text
  • automated testing
  • Figma
  • Adobe XD
  • Sketch
  • WCAG

• Designing While Blind: Nonvisual Tools and Inclusive Workflows for Tactile Graphic Creation

  Lauren Race, Chancey Fleet, Danielle Montour, Lindsay Yazzolino, Marco Salsiccia, Claire Ferrari, Sheri Wells-Jensen, Amy Hurst (2023) — Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2023)

  This experience report examines the challenges and opportunities of Blind-led tactile graphic design, documenting a project where a team of four Blind designers, one sighted designer, and one sighted researcher collaborated to create tactile graphics…

  • tactile graphics
  • blindness
  • co-design
  • inclusive design
  • nonvisual design
  • assistive technology
  • design tools

• Designing for Colour Vision Deficiency: A Scoping Review of Resources That Support Designers in Choosing Accessible Colours

  Connor Geddes, Edward Curran Eggertson, Jonathan Sutton, Garreth W. Tigwell (2025) — ASSETS 2025: 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper presents a comprehensive scoping review of 113 academic papers focused on design methods that support colour accessibility for people with colour vision deficiency (CVD). CVD affects approximately 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women, making cer…

  • colour vision deficiency
  • color blindness
  • design tools
  • guidelines
  • scoping review
  • colour accessibility
  • contrast ratio
  • redundant encoding
  • CVD simulation