Literature Reviews
Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.
9 results found tagged ethnography.
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Tinged with Heartbreak: An Ethnographic Account of Navigating Autistic Loneliness and the Fragile Promise of AI Companionship
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…
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Understanding mobile phone requirements for young adults with cognitive disabilities
Melissa Dawe's Assets '07 paper is a small, qualitative, ethnographically-informed study of how five Colorado families use mobile phones to support remote communication between parents and their young-adult children (ages 19-25) with cognitive disabi…
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Designing Assistive Technology for Blind Users
This paper reports on an observational and interview case study of a congenitally blind college student (pseudonym Sara) conducted in her home to develop design insights for improving interactions between blind users and everyday technological artifa…
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The Ethnographically Informed Participatory Design of a PDA Application to Support Communication
This paper describes an ethnographically informed participatory design process for creating a PDA-based file management system to support communication for a person with aphasia. The research was conducted at the University of British Columbia with o…
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Developing for Autism with User-Centred Design
This short paper describes the development of software designed to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) explore social situations, specifically the concept of sharing. The author identifies a gap in the use of User-Centred Design (UCD) …
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About the relevance of accessibility barriers in the everyday interactions of older people with the web
This paper reports findings from a remarkable 3-year ethnographic study (2005-2008) of 388 older people (aged 65-80) using web and computer technologies in their daily lives at the Àgora adult centre in Barcelona. Unlike most accessibility research t…
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Accessibility barriers to online education for young adults with intellectual disabilities
This paper presents an emic ethnographic account of the accessibility barriers that young adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) encounter when using online education tools in a postsecondary environment. The authors—researchers and educators in …
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Minor Resistance: The Everyday Politics and Power Dynamics of Assistive Technology Adoption
This paper proposes a power-aware framework for understanding assistive technology adoption that moves beyond the traditional "fit" model, where adoption signals good fit between device and user while abandonment signals poor fit. Drawing from an eig…
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"I Felt Like I Was in a Fishbowl": Lived Experience with Telepresence and Non-Visible Disabilities in Higher Education
This paper presents the first ethnographic study of telepresence robot use by students with non-visible disabilities in higher education. The researchers conducted a 10-week ethnography in a postgraduate seminar course at University College London, w…