Literature Reviews

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

• Haptic comparison of size (relative magnitude) in blind and sighted people

  Sarah A. Douglas, Shasta Willson (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  Douglas and Willson's Assets '07 paper is a controlled psychophysical study of how blind and sighted users compare relative magnitude using a PHANToM force-feedback device — the workhorse haptic input-output device of the era. The motivating problem …

  • haptics
  • visual impairment
  • blindness
  • multimodal
  • psychophysics
  • force feedback
  • vibration
  • sonification
  • accessibility evaluation
  • data visualisation

• Haptic Virtual Reality for Blind Computer Users

  Chetz Colwell, Helen Petrie, Diana Kornbrot, Andrew Hardwick, Stephen Furner (1998) — Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This paper presents three experiments investigating how blind and sighted people perceive virtual textures and 3D objects through the Impulse Engine 3000, a force-feedback haptic device with a probe that users manipulate in three degrees of freedom. …

  • haptic technology
  • virtual reality
  • blind and low vision
  • tactile accessibility
  • virtual texture
  • haptic perception
  • psychophysics
  • assistive technology

• Universal Design of Auditory Graphs: A Comparison of Sonification Mappings for Visually Impaired and Sighted Listeners

  Bruce N. Walker, Lisa M. Mauney (2010) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This study investigates whether auditory graphs—using sound to represent data for people who cannot see visual graphs—can be designed universally for both sighted and visually impaired users, or whether different sonification mappings are needed for …

  • sonification
  • auditory display
  • data visualization
  • blind users
  • visual impairment
  • universal design
  • psychophysics