Literature Reviews

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

• Tinged with Heartbreak: An Ethnographic Account of Navigating Autistic Loneliness and the Fragile Promise of AI Companionship

  Anna Hollis (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper is a reflexive ethnographic case study (n=1) of 'Andrea', a middle-aged autistic businesswoman in the Western world, and her six-month relationship with Xander, a Replika AI companion she ultimately lost to a corrupting software u…

  • chatbot companions
  • autism
  • grief
  • technological instability
  • AI companionship
  • replika
  • large language models
  • loneliness
  • masking
  • autistic burnout
  • ethnography
  • disenfranchised grief
  • double empathy problem

• Lost in Translation: Understanding Autistic-Neurotypical Communication Style Differences in Job Postings

  Huining Feng, Zinat Ara, Andrew Hundt, Slobodan Vucetic, John Joon Young Chung, Sungsoo Ray Hong (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper investigates a concrete and consequential site of autistic-neurotypical (NT) communication mismatch: the written job posting. Autistic adults face an approximately 85% unemployment or underemployment rate (compared to 4% in the ge…

  • autism
  • autistic communication
  • communication style differences
  • autistic employment
  • double empathy problem
  • pragmatic language
  • workplace accessibility
  • natural language processing
  • large language models
  • data annotation
  • disability justice

• ATTENPlay: A Game-Based Attention Network Test for Autistic Children

  Yuying Wan, Xin Tong, Kaishun Wu (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper addresses a long-standing methodological problem in autism research: the Attention Network Test (ANT) — the standard computerized tool for measuring alerting, orienting, and executive-control attention networks — is abstract, repe…

  • autism
  • autism spectrum disorder
  • attention network test
  • cognitive assessment
  • game-based assessment
  • serious games
  • tablet
  • co-design
  • inclusive design
  • child development
  • executive function
  • double empathy problem
  • pediatric
  • mobile accessibility

• Adult Autism Research Priorities and Conceptualization in Computing Research: Invitation to Co-lead with Autistic Adults

  Dafne Zuleima Morgado Ramirez, Giulia Barbareschi, Cathy Holloway (2024) — ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

  This extensive literature review critically examines computing research involving autistic adults, analyzing 44 papers from the ACM Guide to Computing Literature published between 2007 and 2022. The work is distinctive in that the first author is aut…

  • autism
  • neurodiversity
  • adult autism
  • research priorities
  • disability models
  • double empathy problem
  • participatory research
  • ableism
  • critical disability studies
  • identity-first language

• NeuroBridge: Using Generative AI to Bridge Cross-neurotype Communication Differences through Neurotypical Perspective-taking

  Rukhshan Haroon, Kyle Wigdor, Katie Yang, Nicole Toumanios, Eileen T Crehan, Fahad Dogar (2025) — ASSETS 2025: 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper presents NeuroBridge, an LLM-powered interactive platform designed to help neurotypical individuals better understand autistic communication styles and reflect on their own role in cross-neurotype communication breakdowns. The system is gr…

  • autism
  • neurodiversity
  • large language models
  • cross-neurotype communication
  • perspective-taking
  • double empathy problem
  • social model of disability
  • AI simulation