Literature Reviews

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

• Dual Educational Electronic Textbooks: The Starlight Platform

  Dimitris Grammenos, Anthony Savidis, Yannis Georgalis, Themistoklis Bourdenas, Constantine Stephanidis (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) in Crete, Greece presents Starlight, a software platform for creating and reading multimodal interactive electronic textbooks that provide a Dual User Interface — an interface …

  • accessible publishing
  • electronic textbook
  • blind students
  • inclusive education
  • dual user interface
  • braille display
  • text-to-speech
  • non-visual interaction
  • multimodal interaction
  • earcons
  • educational technology

• Auditory Navigation in Hyperspace: Design and Evaluation of a Non-Visual Hypermedia System for Blind Users

  Sarah Morley, Helen Petrie, Anne-Marie O'Neill, Peter McNally (1998) — Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This paper from the University of Hertfordshire's Sensory Disabilities Research Unit presents the design and rigorous evaluation of DAHNI (Demonstrator of the ACCESS media Non-Visual Interface), a hypermedia system built specifically for blind users …

  • auditory interface
  • blindness
  • non-speech sounds
  • hypermedia
  • nonvisual navigation
  • user-centred design
  • evaluation methodology
  • assistive technology
  • earcons

• Enhancing Scanning Input with Non-Speech Sounds

  Stephen A. Brewster, Veli-Pekka Raty, Atte Kortekangas (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper proposes adding structured non-speech sounds (earcons) to scanning input systems used by people with severe motor disabilities who can only operate a single switch. Scanning input works by sequentially highlighting items in a grid; the use…

  • scanning input
  • earcons
  • sonification
  • auditory display
  • switch access
  • augmentative and alternative communication
  • multimodal interaction
  • motor disability

• Annotation-based Video Enrichment for Blind People: A Pilot Study on the Use of Earcons and Speech Synthesis

  Benoît Encelle, Magali Ollagnier-Beldame, Stéphanie Pouchot, Yannick Prié (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This paper presents exploratory work from the ACAV (Collaborative Annotation for Video Accessibility) project, investigating how combining earcons (nonverbal audio messages) with speech synthesis can improve video accessibility for blind people. Trad…

  • video accessibility
  • blindness
  • audio description
  • earcons
  • speech technology
  • multimedia accessibility
  • sonification

• Auditory Displays for Accessible Fantasy Sports

  Jared M. Batterman, Jonathan H. Schuett, Bruce N. Walker (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '13)

  This short paper addresses the inaccessibility of online fantasy sports platforms for visually impaired users and presents an accessible fantasy football system built around auditory display techniques. Fantasy sports are a major social and recreatio…

  • auditory display
  • sonification
  • blind users
  • visual impairment
  • sports accessibility
  • earcons
  • spearcons
  • auditory graphs
  • screen readers
  • recreation
  • social inclusion

• Planning Your Journey in Audio: Design and Evaluation of Auditory Route Overviews

  Nida Aziz, Tony Stockman, Rebecca Stewart (2022) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This research develops and evaluates an auditory route overview system that enables blind users to preview walking routes before embarking on journeys. The system addresses a critical gap: while many navigation aids support live guidance, few tools a…

  • blind navigation
  • auditory display
  • route planning
  • auditory icons
  • earcons
  • sonification
  • wayfinding
  • user-led design
  • mental maps

• An experimental sound-based hierarchical menu navigation system for visually handicapped use of graphical user interfaces

  Arthur I. Karshmer, P. Brawner, G. Reiswig (1994) — Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This paper addresses the accessibility crisis created by the shift from character-based computer interfaces to graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in the early 1990s. The authors note that earlier text-based systems were well-served by assistive technol…

  • GUI accessibility
  • sonification
  • auditory interface
  • blind and low vision
  • menu navigation
  • screen readers
  • earcons

• VRBubble: Enhancing Peripheral Awareness of Avatars for People with Visual Impairments in Social Virtual Reality

  Tiger F. Ji, Brianna Cochran, Yuhang Zhao (2022) — Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2022)

  This paper introduces VRBubble, an audio-based interaction technique designed to make social virtual reality environments accessible to people with visual impairments (PVI). While social VR platforms like VRChat and Rec Room are growing rapidly as sp…

  • virtual reality accessibility
  • visual impairment
  • spatial audio
  • proxemics
  • social interaction
  • peripheral awareness
  • audio feedback
  • earcons
  • assistive technology
  • avatar awareness