Literature Reviews

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

• Development of Dialogue Systems for a Mobility Aid for Blind People: Initial Design and Usability Testing

  Thomas Strothotte, Steffi Fritz, Rainer Michel, Andreas Raab, Helen Petrie, Valerie Johnson, Lars Reichert, Axel Schalt (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper presents the MoBIC Travel Aid (MoTA), an EU-funded system designed to increase independent mobility for blind and elderly travellers by combining Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with the Global Positioning System (GPS). The system has…

  • blindness and low vision
  • navigation
  • GPS
  • GIS
  • orientation and mobility
  • wayfinding
  • route planning
  • electronic travel aid
  • user-centered design

• Toward 3D Scene Understanding via Audio-description: Kinect-iPad Fusion for the Visually Impaired

  Juan Diego Gomez, Sinan Mohammed, Guido Bologna, Thierry Pun (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This demonstration paper presents a computer-vision-based framework that combines a Microsoft Kinect 3D depth sensor with an iPad touchscreen to enable visually impaired users to understand the spatial layout of indoor scenes through audio. The syste…

  • sonification
  • visual substitution
  • Kinect
  • computer vision
  • blindness
  • object recognition
  • spatial audio
  • tactile exploration
  • electronic travel aid
  • sensory substitution

• Exploration and Avoidance of Surrounding Obstacles for the Visually Impaired

  Limin Zeng, Denise Prescher, Gerhard Weber (2012) — Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012)

  This paper presents the 3DOD (3D Obstacle Detector), a wearable system that combines a 3D Time-of-Flight (TOF) camera with a portable multi-line refreshable Braille display to help blind pedestrians detect and avoid obstacles beyond the reach of a wh…

  • blindness
  • obstacle detection
  • electronic travel aid
  • haptic feedback
  • tactile display
  • refreshable braille display
  • wayfinding
  • mobility
  • depth sensing
  • assistive technology

• Experimental Analysis of a Spatialised Audio Interface for People with Visual Impairments

  Jacobus C. Lock, Iain D. Gilchrist, Grzegorz Cielniak, Nicola Bellotto (2020) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper evaluates a spatialised audio interface designed to help people with visual impairments find objects in indoor environments. Part of the ActiVis project, the system uses a Google Project Tango mobile device with RGB-D cameras for localizat…

  • visual impairment
  • blindness
  • navigation
  • spatial audio
  • bone conduction
  • electronic travel aid
  • Fitts Law
  • audio interface
  • object finding