Literature Reviews

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

• Decidos: Accessible, Usable and Secure Voting in Low-stakes Elections Using Identity Wallets

  Floris Jansen, Hanna Schraffenberger, Bart Jacobs (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26)

  Jansen, Schraffenberger, and Jacobs (Radboud University) propose Decidos, a prototype web-based election platform designed for low-stakes elections — student councils, homeowners associations, small shareholder meetings, local citizen consultations —…

  • voting accessibility
  • e-voting
  • internet voting
  • identity wallet
  • verifiable credentials
  • privacy
  • security
  • civic participation
  • plain language
  • WCAG

• Co-designing MESA-Bot: Enhancing Accessibility, Privacy, Security, and Trust in a Mental Health Chatbot for Older Adults

  Aishwarya Umeshkumar Surani, Sanchari Das (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Surani and Das address the gap between accessibility design and privacy-and-security engineering in mental health chatbots for older adults, a population nearly a billion strong worldwide for whom cost, stigma, wait times, and digital-literacy barrie…

  • older adults
  • mental health
  • chatbot
  • co-design
  • privacy
  • security
  • accessibility
  • trust
  • threat modeling
  • conversational agent

• Internet Voting Maturity Framework — Quantifying Maturity in Internet Voting Protocols

  Stanisław Barański, Ben Biedermann, Joshua Ellul (2026) — ACM Distributed Ledger Technologies

  This paper introduces the Internet Voting Maturity Framework (IVMF), a structured, trust-centric scoring methodology for evaluating and comparing seventeen internet voting protocols. The research addresses a critical gap: despite a proliferation of i…

  • internet voting
  • e-voting
  • blockchain
  • accessibility
  • trust models
  • security
  • cryptography
  • digital democracy
  • decentralized autonomous organizations
  • verifiability

• Developing usable CAPTCHAs for blind users

  Jonathan Holman, Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Heidi Feng, John D'Arcy (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '07)

  This short ASSETS 2007 poster from a Towson University team led by Jonathan Lazar — joined by Jonathan Holman, Jinjuan Heidi Feng, and John D'Arcy of Notre Dame — addresses the long-standing accessibility problem that text-based CAPTCHAs (the distort…

  • CAPTCHA
  • audio CAPTCHA
  • blindness and low vision
  • screen readers
  • web accessibility
  • security
  • usability
  • universal usability
  • Turing test
  • visual impairment
  • multimodal
  • JAWS
  • Window-Eyes

• Strategies: An Inclusive Authentication Framework

  Natã M. Barbosa (2014) — ASSETS '14: Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This short paper proposes an interaction workflow for accessible web authentication designed to reduce the difficulties people with disabilities face when logging into websites. The framework aims to be secure, scalable, deployable, privacy-preservin…

  • authentication
  • web accessibility
  • privacy
  • security
  • inclusive design
  • biometrics
  • mobile devices

• Investigating User Behavior for Authentication Methods: A Comparison between Individuals with Down Syndrome and Neurotypical Users

  Yao Ma, Jinjuan Feng, Libby Kumin, Jonathan Lazar (2013) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This groundbreaking study provides the first experimental research on how individuals with Down syndrome (DS) interact with web authentication mechanisms. The researchers conducted a six-week longitudinal study with 10 adults with DS (ages 18-39) and…

  • cognitive accessibility
  • Down syndrome
  • authentication
  • passwords
  • security
  • cognitive disability

• A3C: An Image-Association-Based Computing Device Authentication Framework for People with Upper Extremity Impairments

  Brittany Lewis, Priyankan Kirupaharan, Tina-Marie Ranalli, Krishna Venkatasubramanian (2024) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents A3C (Accessible image-Association-based Authentication for Computing devices), a novel authentication framework designed for people with upper extremity impairments (UEI). Over 20 million Americans have conditions—including trauma…

  • authentication
  • upper extremity impairments
  • graphical authentication
  • security
  • assistive technology
  • motor impairments
  • accessible design

• I Don't Want to Sound Rude, but It's None of Their Business: Exploring Security and Privacy Concerns around Assistive Technology Use in Educational Settings

  Alisha Marsh, Lauren R. Milne (2024) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This qualitative study investigates the security and privacy concerns of students with disabilities who use assistive technology (AT) in higher education settings. The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 8 students who use various f…

  • assistive technology
  • privacy
  • security
  • disability disclosure
  • higher education
  • qualitative research

• Sequential Gestural Passcodes on Google Glass

  Abdullah Ali (2015) — ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This poster paper presents a prototype authentication system using Google Glass to help people with visual impairments access online accounts while protecting against shoulder surfing attacks. The author identifies two intersecting problems: blind us…

  • blindness
  • authentication
  • security
  • wearable computing
  • gesture interaction
  • Google Glass
  • password
  • shoulder surfing

• Accessible Mobile Biometrics for Elderly

  Ramon Blanco-Gonzalo, Raul Sanchez-Reillo, Loïc Martínez-Normand, Belen Fernandez-Saavedra, Judith Liu-Jimenez (2015) — ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This paper presents one of the first accessibility evaluations of mobile biometric authentication, focusing on elderly users making Point of Sale payments via smartphone. The researchers developed an Android app using NFC communication and two biomet…

  • biometrics
  • elderly
  • mobile accessibility
  • authentication
  • fingerprint
  • signature recognition
  • EN 301 549
  • security
  • aging
  • mobile payments