Literature Reviews

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

• Learning and Perceiving Colors Haptically

  Kanav Kahol, Jamieson French, Laura Bratton, Sethuraman Panchanathan (2006) — Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper presents a novel system for enabling blind individuals to learn, perceive, and compare colours through haptic (touch-based) feedback. Colour is a purely visual feature that cannot be perceived through auditory or olfactory senses, yet it p…

  • visual impairment
  • haptic interface
  • colour perception
  • sensory substitution
  • assistive technology
  • congenital blindness
  • tactile display
  • colour blindness

• Interactive Tactile Display System: A Support System for the Visually Disabled to Recognize 3D Objects

  Yoshihiro Kawai, Fumiaki Tomita (1996) — Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper from the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan describes an interactive tactile display system that combines stereo computer vision with a pin-based tactile display and voice synthesis to help blind users recognize three-dimensiona…

  • blindness and low vision
  • tactile display
  • stereo vision
  • computer vision
  • 3D object recognition
  • haptic technology
  • assistive technology
  • refreshable display

• A Tactile Windowing System for Blind Users

  Denise Prescher, Gerhard Weber, Martin Spindler (2010) — Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This paper from Technische Universität Dresden presents the Braille Window System (BWS), a windowing interface designed for a large planar tactile display — the BrailleDis9000, a touch-sensitive pin-matrix of 120 columns and 60 rows (7,200 pins). Sta…

  • braille
  • tactile display
  • tactile graphics
  • gesture interaction
  • blindness
  • screen reader
  • windowing system
  • GUI accessibility
  • pin-matrix display
  • multitouch

• Exploration and Avoidance of Surrounding Obstacles for the Visually Impaired

  Limin Zeng, Denise Prescher, Gerhard Weber (2012) — Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012)

  This paper presents the 3DOD (3D Obstacle Detector), a wearable system that combines a 3D Time-of-Flight (TOF) camera with a portable multi-line refreshable Braille display to help blind pedestrians detect and avoid obstacles beyond the reach of a wh…

  • blindness
  • obstacle detection
  • electronic travel aid
  • haptic feedback
  • tactile display
  • refreshable braille display
  • wayfinding
  • mobility
  • depth sensing
  • assistive technology

• Haptic Gloves Prototype for Audio-Tactile Web Browsing

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

  This paper presents preliminary work on FeelX, a haptic gloves system designed to enable blind users to explore web page layouts through touch. The research addresses a fundamental limitation of screen readers: they present web content serially, crea…

  • blindness
  • haptic interface
  • web accessibility
  • screen reader
  • tactile display
  • wearable
  • Braille
  • spatial layout
  • assistive technology

• Feel-It: Personalized Audio-Tactile Web Browsing

  Anatoliy Borodin, Yevgen Borodin, Andrii Soviak, Vikas Ashok, Shirin Disfani, I. V. Ramakrishnan (2019) — Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This demonstration paper presents Feel-It, a hardware-software system for audio-tactile web browsing that enables blind users to explore the two-dimensional spatial layout of web pages through touch. The core problem addressed is that screen readers …

  • blindness
  • haptic feedback
  • tactile display
  • web browsing
  • screen reader
  • assistive technology
  • personalization
  • computer vision
  • Braille
  • web segmentation

• A Low-Fidelity Prototyping Method for Blind Users: A Case Study on Designing Two-Dimensional Tactile Displays

  Sara Alzalabny, Karin Müller, Kathrin Gerling, Thorsten Schwarz, Bastian Rapp, Rainer Stiefelhagen (2025) — ASSETS 2025: 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper addresses the fundamental problem that design workshops—a key method for involving end users in technology development—are largely inaccessible to blind people due to their reliance on visual methods like sketching, storyboarding, and visu…

  • blindness
  • low vision
  • prototyping
  • co-design
  • tactile display
  • design workshops
  • assistive technology design
  • participatory design
  • haptic interaction