Literature Reviews

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

• Designing a Generative AI-Assisted Music Psychotherapy Tool for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Individuals

  Youjin Choi, JaeYoung Moon, JinYoung Yoo, Jennifer G. Kim, Jin-Hyuk Hong (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Choi and colleagues designed, built, and evaluated a generative-AI music psychotherapy tool co-designed with licensed Korean music therapists for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) users. The work is motivated by the observation that music psychotherapy …

  • music therapy
  • deaf accessibility
  • DHH
  • generative AI
  • conversational agent
  • songwriting
  • mental health
  • cochlear implant
  • LLM
  • co-design
  • multimodal
  • HCI

• Co-Ideating a Digital Pain Companion: Exploring How Music Can Support Daily Chronic Pain Self-Management

  Bleiz M. Del Sette, Charalampos Saitis (2026) — ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare

  This paper presents the co-ideation of the Digital Pain Companion (DPC), a proposed music-integrating wearable interface for daily chronic pain self-management. Grounded in the psychosocial dimensions of chronic pain rather than biomedical symptom tr…

  • chronic pain
  • co-design
  • music therapy
  • wearable technology
  • self-management
  • pain communication
  • soma design
  • sonification
  • person-centred design

• Evaluation of the Use of Real-time 3D Graphics to Augment Therapeutic Music Sessions for Young People on the Autism Spectrum

  J. J. McGowan, I. McGregor, G. Leplâtre (2021) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  CymaSense is a real-time 3D visualization application based on cymatics—the study of making sound visible through vibration patterns—designed to augment therapeutic music sessions for autistic individuals. The system maps audio parameters to visual e…

  • autism
  • music therapy
  • multi-sensory
  • audio-visual
  • cymatics
  • tangible user interface
  • natural user interface
  • communication

• CymaSense: A Novel Audio-Visual Therapeutic Tool for People on the Autism Spectrum

  John McGowan, Grégory Leplâtre, Iain McGregor (2017) — Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17)

  This paper presents CymaSense, an interactive multimodal tool that generates real-time 3D visual representations of sound based on Cymatics — the study of visible patterns created by sound vibrations in physical media like water or metal plates. The …

  • autism spectrum disorder
  • music therapy
  • assistive technology
  • multimodal interaction
  • sensory processing
  • tangible interaction
  • audio-visual
  • communication
  • neurodiversity

• Using the Musical Multimedia Tool ACMUS with People with Severe Mental Disorders: A Pilot Study

  Mikel Ostiz-Blanco, Alfredo Pina, Miriam Lizaso, Jose Javier Astraín, Gonzalo Arrondo (2018) — Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2018)

  This demo paper from the University of Navarra presents a pilot study evaluating ACMUS (Accessible Music), a multimedia tool that adds visual and interactive dimensions to music therapy for people with severe mental disorders. Music therapy has shown…

  • mental health
  • schizophrenia
  • music therapy
  • music accessibility
  • serious games
  • occupational therapy
  • multimedia
  • cognitive accessibility

• CHIMELIGHT: Augmenting Instruments in Interactive Music Therapy for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

  Joana Lobo, Soichiro Matsuda, Izumi Futamata, Ryoichi Sakuta, Kenji Suzuki (2019) — Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper presents CHIMELIGHT, an IoT-based system that augments handchime musical instruments with real-time visual feedback to support music therapists working with children who have neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) including autism spectrum di…

  • music therapy
  • neurodevelopmental disorder
  • autism spectrum disorder
  • ADHD
  • children
  • IoT
  • assistive technology
  • visual feedback
  • behavior modification
  • social playware
  • applied behavior analysis

• Designing Embodied Musical Interaction for Children with Autism

  Grazia Ragone (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

  This paper presents OSMoSIS (Observation of Social Motor Synchrony with an Interactive System), an interactive musical system designed to support embodied musical interaction for children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) during music therapy ses…

  • autism
  • music therapy
  • embodied interaction
  • motion capture
  • sonification
  • social motor synchrony
  • children
  • assistive technology
  • Microsoft Kinect