Literature Reviews

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

• Facade: Auto-generating Tactile Interfaces to Appliances

  Anhong Guo, Jeeeun Kim, Xiang "Anthony" Chen, Tom Yeh, Scott E. Hudson, Jennifer Mankoff, Jeffrey P. Bigham (2017) — Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2017)

  This paper introduces Facade, a crowdsourced fabrication pipeline that enables blind people to independently make flat-panel appliance interfaces accessible by generating 3D-printed tactile button overlays. The problem addressed is that modern applia…

  • 3D printing
  • tactile interface
  • blind users
  • crowdsourcing
  • fabrication
  • appliance accessibility
  • assistive technology

• Making and Accessibility: A Systematic Literature Review on the Multilayered Dimensions of Accessible Making

  Saquib Sarwar, David Wilson (2025) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This systematic literature review examines the intersection of making/fabrication and accessibility through analysis of 113 papers published at ACM conferences between 2010 and 2023. The authors investigate three research questions: which disability …

  • systematic literature review
  • making
  • fabrication
  • DIY assistive technology
  • makerspaces
  • 3D printing
  • co-design
  • participatory design
  • blind and visually impaired
  • tactile interfaces

• TactileMaps.net: A Web Interface for Generating Customized 3D-Printable Tactile Maps

  Brandon T. Taylor, Anind K. Dey, Dan P. Siewiorek, Asim Smailagic (2015) — ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This demonstration paper presents TactileMaps.net, a web-based tool that enables visually impaired users to independently generate customized 3D-printable tactile maps. Tactile maps are valuable tools for helping blind individuals understand their en…

  • visual impairment
  • tactile graphics
  • 3D printing
  • maps
  • wayfinding
  • assistive technology
  • fabrication

• Beyond Beautiful: Embroidering Legible and Expressive Tactile Graphics

  Margaret Ellen Seehorn, Claris Winston, Bo Liu, Gene S-H Kim, Emily White, Nupur Gorkar, Kate S Glazko, Aashaka Desai, Jerry Cao, Megan Hofmann, Jennifer Mankoff (2025) — ASSETS 2025: 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper explores machine embroidery as a medium for producing tactile graphics—tangible representations of visual information used by blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals. Current methods for producing tactile graphics, primarily embossin…

  • tactile graphics
  • machine embroidery
  • blind and visually impaired
  • fabrication
  • braille
  • texture design
  • optimization
  • accessibility