Literature Reviews
Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.
13 results found tagged smartwatch.
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Technical Perspective: Computation Where the (Inter)Action Is
This one-page technical perspective accompanies the SoundWatch paper in Communications of the ACM. Bigham uses SoundWatch — a smartwatch prototype that detects audio events and displays descriptions for deaf and hard-of-hearing people — as a lens to …
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All the Way There and Back: Inertial-Based, Phone-in-Pocket Indoor Wayfinding and Backtracking Apps for Blind Travelers
This paper presents two iOS apps designed to help blind travelers navigate indoor building environments without requiring external infrastructure like Bluetooth beacons or visual markers. The Wayfinding app uses a known floor plan to compute and guid…
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WeLi: A Smartwatch Application to Assist Students with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
This poster paper presents WeLi (Wearable Life), a smartwatch application designed to assist students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) in post-secondary educational environments. The system was developed for and deployed at Mas…
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VERSE: Bridging Screen Readers and Voice Assistants for Enhanced Eyes-Free Web Search
This paper identifies the complementary strengths and weaknesses of screen readers and voice assistants (VAs) for blind web searchers, then presents VERSE (Voice Exploration, Retrieval, and SEarch), a prototype that merges the best of both technologi…
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Exploring feasibility of wrist gestures for non-visual interactions with wearables
This paper investigates the accessibility of wrist gestures as an input modality for people with visual impairments (PVIs) interacting with smartwatches. Smartwatches hold particular promise for PVIs: they are always available, enable one-handed use …
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SoundWatch: Exploring Smartwatch-based Deep Learning Approaches to Support Sound Awareness for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users
This paper presents SoundWatch, a smartwatch-based sound awareness system that uses deep learning to classify environmental sounds in real time and provide visual and haptic notifications to deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) users. The research addresse…
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Activity Recognition in Older Adults with Training Data from Younger Adults: Preliminary Results on in Vivo Smartwatch Sensor Data
This extended abstract investigates a critical age-related bias in wearable activity recognition: models trained on data from younger adults perform significantly worse when applied to older adults. The study is motivated by the growing potential of …
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WLA4ND: a Wearable Dataset of Learning Activities for Young Adults with Neurodiversity to Provide Support in Education
This paper introduces WLA4ND (Wearable Learning Activities for Neurodiversity), the first wearable sensor dataset of learning activities collected from young adults with neurodiversity. While existing wearable sensor datasets focus on fitness, daily …
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"Not There Yet": Feasibility and Challenges of Mobile Sound Recognition to Support Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People
This paper presents the first longitudinal field study of a mobile sound recognition system used by Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people in their daily lives. The researchers deployed SoundWatch, a smartwatch-based app that uses a deep learning mode…
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A feasibility study on the use of audio-based ecological momentary assessment with persons with aphasia
This paper presents a feasibility study investigating whether audio-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) can be used to evaluate word-finding difficulties (anomia) in people with aphasia outside clinical settings. Aphasia, a language disorder …