Literature Reviews

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

• EmojiFan: Designing A Social Interface Supporting Facial Expression Interaction for Blind and Low Vision People in Party Settings

  Jinlin Miao, Shan Luo, Yue Chen, Hongyue Wang, Zhejun Zhang, Rina R. Wehbe (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  This CHI 2026 paper presents EmojiFan, an AI-assisted wearable prototype designed to help blind and low-vision (BLV) adults participate in facial-expression interactions in party settings — a social context the authors identify as particularly hostil…

  • blind and low vision
  • visual impairment
  • facial expression
  • social accessibility
  • wearable technology
  • haptic feedback
  • AI-assisted assistive technology
  • emotion recognition
  • nonverbal communication
  • emoji
  • bodystorming
  • thematic analysis

• Implementation and Evaluation of Animation Controls Sufficient for Conveying ASL Facial Expressions

  Hernisa Kacorri, Matt Huenerfauth (2014) — Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS '14)

  This ASSETS 2014 short paper (2 pages) reports an infrastructure contribution to sign-language-animation research: the authors extended an existing virtual human character (Max, on the open-source EMBR animation platform) with a full set of MPEG-4 Fa…

  • american sign language
  • sign language animation
  • signing avatar
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • facial expression
  • animation
  • accessibility research

• Evaluating Importance of Facial Expression in American Sign Language and Pidgin Signed English Animations

  Matt Huenerfauth, Pengfei Lu, Andrew Rosenberg (2011) — Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This paper presents the first empirical evaluation of the impact of facial expressions on the understandability and perceived quality of American Sign Language (ASL) and Pidgin Signed English (PSE) computer animations. ASL animations have significant…

  • sign language
  • sign language animation
  • deaf accessibility
  • facial expression
  • American Sign Language
  • assistive technology
  • natural language processing

• Comparing Native Signers' Perception of American Sign Language Animations and Videos via Eye Tracking

  Hernisa Kacorri, Allen Harper, Matt Huenerfauth (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper investigates whether eye tracking can serve as an alternative or complementary evaluation method for assessing the quality of synthesized American Sign Language (ASL) animations. Computer-generated ASL animations offer accessibility benefi…

  • sign language
  • American Sign Language
  • animation
  • eye tracking
  • deaf accessibility
  • facial expression
  • user study
  • sign language synthesis

• Do You See What I See? Designing a Sensory Substitution Device to Access Non-Verbal Modes of Communication

  M. Iftekhar Tanveer, A. S. M. Iftekhar Anam, Mohammed Yeasin, Majid Khan (2013) — Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '13)

  This paper presents iFEPS (improved Facial Expression Perception through Sound), a visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device that enables blind users to perceive their conversation partner's facial expressions through audio feedback. Research su…

  • sensory substitution
  • blind users
  • facial expression
  • non-verbal communication
  • computer vision
  • sonification
  • participatory design
  • smartphone
  • social interaction
  • face tracking
  • FACS

• Lessons Learned in Designing AI for Autistic Adults

  Andrew Begel, John Tang, Sean Andrist, Michael Barnett, Tony Carbary, Piali Choudhury, Edward Cutrell, Alberto Fung, Sasa Junuzovic, Daniel McDuff, Kael Rowan, Shibashankar Sahoo, Jennifer Frances Waldern, Jessica Wolk, Hui Zheng, Annuska Zolyomi (2020) — ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This short paper from Microsoft Research presents a candid account of a design failure and the valuable lessons it produced. The team set out to build Video Calling for Autism (VC4A), a video calling application with an "Expressiveness Mirror" that u…

  • autism
  • artificial intelligence
  • emotion recognition
  • video calling
  • participatory design
  • Wizard of Oz
  • neurodiversity
  • facial expression

• Evaluation of Language Feedback Methods for Student Videos of American Sign Language

  Matt Huenerfauth, Elaine Gale, Brian Penly, Sree Pillutla, Mackenzie Willard, Dhananjai Hariharan (2017) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper investigates how to best present video-based feedback to students learning American Sign Language (ASL), as part of a long-term project to build an automatic system that analyses student signing videos and provides immediate corrective fee…

  • sign language
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • ASL education
  • video feedback
  • language learning
  • Wizard-of-Oz
  • facial expression