Literature Reviews

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

• "It's Complicated": Negotiating Accessibility and (Mis)Representation in Image Descriptions of Race, Gender, and Disability

  Cynthia L. Bennett, Cole Gleason, Morgan Klaus Scheuerman, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Anhong Guo, Alexandra To (2021) — CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  This qualitative study investigates how screen reader users who are also Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), non-binary, and/or transgender navigate the complex landscape of image descriptions, particularly regarding how appearance characteri…

  • image descriptions
  • alt text
  • screen readers
  • visual impairments
  • race
  • gender
  • disability
  • AI bias
  • representation
  • intersectionality
  • identity

• Race, Disability, and Technology: A Call to Action for Accessibility Researchers

  Aashaka Desai, Aaleyah Lewis, Sanika Moharana, Anne Spencer Ross, Jennifer Mankoff, Christina Harrington (2026) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents a framework for accessibility researchers to meaningfully engage with race and disability as intersecting identity dimensions. Building on Kimberlé Crenshaw's foundational work on intersectionality—which originated to address how …

  • intersectionality
  • race
  • disability studies
  • research methods
  • critical theory
  • disability justice

• Working at the Intersection of Race, Disability and Accessibility

  Harrington, Christina N., Desai, Aashaka, Lewis, Aaleyah, Moharana, Sanika, Ross, Anne Spencer, Mankoff, Jennifer (2023) — Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper argues that accessibility research has systematically overlooked race as a meaningful construct, treating it at best as a shallow demographic variable while studying disability in isolation. The authors — a racially diverse team from Carne…

  • intersectionality
  • race
  • disability
  • social justice
  • critical race theory
  • accessibility research
  • equity
  • inclusion
  • research methods