Literature Reviews

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

• Embroidered Braille: Towards Accessible and Inclusive Educational Tools and Everyday Applications

  Pouya M Khorsandi, Sara Nabil (2026) — CHI EA '26: Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  This short CHI Extended Abstracts paper by Khorsandi and Nabil (Queen's University iStudio) stakes out digitally embroidered Braille as a design space for DIY making of accessible everyday artefacts, rather than as another institutional assistive-tec…

  • braille
  • digital embroidery
  • tactile graphics
  • blind and low vision
  • DIY
  • hybrid craft
  • e-textiles
  • maker culture
  • self-expression
  • STEM education

• TacChat: Exploring User Generation and Accessible Sharing via Tactile Graphics for the Blind and Visually Impaired

  Yuewen Zhang, Danning Li, Kexin Zhou, Pu Jiang, Jingyang Lyu, Kotaro Hara, Baoshui Chen, Shuai Gao, Yang Jiao (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26)

  Zhang and colleagues (Tsinghua University, Singapore Management University, and Beijing School for the Blind) flip the usual framing of tactile-graphics research: rather than asking how blind and low-vision (BLV) people can better consume tactile ima…

  • tactile graphics
  • refreshable tactile display
  • blind and low vision
  • accessible authoring
  • social media accessibility
  • technology probe
  • accessibility research
  • self-expression
  • non-visual interaction

• Beyond Additive Design: An Empirical Taxonomy of Multimodal STEM Accessibility Systems

  Madjid Sadallah, Benoit Encelle (2026) — Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26)

  Sadallah and Encelle conduct a systematic review of 66 multimodal STEM accessibility systems for blind and visually impaired (BVI) users published between 2015 and 2025, drawn from the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, OpenAlex, PubMed, and Web of Sc…

  • STEM accessibility
  • multimodal interaction
  • cognitive load
  • sensory integration
  • blind and low vision
  • systematic review
  • accessibility research
  • sonification
  • tactile graphics
  • haptics
  • cognitive engineering

• Nonvisual Support for Understanding and Reasoning about Data Structures

  Brianna L. Wimer, Ritesh Kanchi, Kaija Frierson, Venkatesh Potluri, Ronald A. Metoyer, Jennifer Mankoff, Miya Natsuhara, Matt X. Wang (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Wimer, Kanchi, and colleagues present Arboretum, a web-based system that generates accessible representations of introductory data structure diagrams (arrays and binary trees) for blind and visually impaired (BVI) computer science students. The autho…

  • blind and low vision
  • BVI
  • screen readers
  • tactile graphics
  • data structures
  • computer science education
  • accessible diagrams
  • diagramming
  • nonvisual interaction
  • multimodal access
  • WAI-ARIA
  • WCAG
  • Mermaid
  • Graphviz
  • wizard of oz
  • accessible education

• Three Modalities, Two Design Probes, One Prototype, and No Vision: Experience-Based Co-Design of a Multi-modal 3D Data Visualization Tool

  Sanchita S. Kamath, Aziz N. Zeidieh, Venkatesh Potluri, Sile O'Modhrain, Kenneth Perry, JooYoung Seo (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Kamath et al. report an Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD) process in which five blind or low-vision (BLV) researchers and one sighted collaborator built a web-native, multimodal prototype for exploring 3D surface plots - a class of visualisation cent…

  • blind and low vision
  • data visualization
  • 3D visualization
  • sonification
  • spatial audio
  • tactile graphics
  • experience-based co-design
  • multimodal interaction
  • STEM accessibility
  • non-visual interaction
  • participatory design
  • co-design
  • web accessibility

• Touching Movement: 3D Tactile Poses for Supporting Blind People in Learning Body Movements

  Kengo Tanaka, Xiyue Wang, Hironobu Takagi, Yoichi Ochiai, Chieko Asakawa (2026) — Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '26)

  Tanaka and colleagues investigate whether 3D-printed tactile models of whole-body poses can help blind learners acquire physical movements that are normally taught through visual demonstration. Verbal descriptions are notoriously inconsistent and str…

  • tactile graphics
  • 3D printing
  • blindness and low vision
  • visual impairment
  • physical activity
  • accessible education
  • pose estimation
  • participatory design
  • multimodal interaction
  • embodied interaction

• Automated tactile graphics translation: in the field

  Chandrika Jayant, Matt Renzelmann, Dana Wen, Satria Krisnandi, Richard Ladner, Dan Comden (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper describes two years of field work extending the Tactile Graphics Assistant (TGA), a system developed at the University of Washington to automate the translation of figures from mathematics, science, and engineering (STEM) textbooks into em…

  • tactile graphics
  • Braille
  • STEM accessibility
  • blindness and low vision
  • image processing
  • machine learning
  • OCR
  • automated alternative formats
  • mathematical accessibility
  • accessible publishing

• Automatic Production of Tactile Graphics from Scalable Vector Graphics

  Stephen E. Krufka, Kenneth E. Barner (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper from the University of Delaware presents a method for automatically converting Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) into tactile representations for blind users using a Braille embosser. The key innovation exploits the hierarchical tree structur…

  • tactile graphics
  • blindness
  • scalable vector graphics
  • braille embosser
  • image accessibility
  • edge detection
  • image processing
  • accessible graphics
  • web accessibility

• Sparsha: A Comprehensive Indian Language Toolset for the Blind

  Anirban Lahiri, Satya Jyoti Chattopadhyay, Anupam Basu (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper presents Sparsha ("feeling of touch" in Hindi), the first comprehensive toolset enabling over 13 million visually impaired people in the Indian subcontinent to read and write in their native languages using a computer. Existing Braille tra…

  • braille
  • visual impairment
  • Indian languages
  • multilingual accessibility
  • screen reader
  • text-to-speech
  • tactile graphics
  • internationalization
  • digital inclusion
  • Global South accessibility

• Automating Tactile Graphics Translation

  Richard E. Ladner, Melody Y. Ivory, Rajesh Rao, Sheryl Burgstahler, Dan Comden, Sangyun Hahn, Matthew Renzelmann, Satria Krisnandi, Mahalakshmi Ramasamy, Beverly Slabosky, Andrew Martin, Amelia Lacenski, Stuart Olsen, Dmitri Groce (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper addresses the critical shortage of tactile graphics available to blind students in mathematics, science, and engineering (MSE) courses. Postsecondary science textbooks may have images on half their pages — sometimes up to 500 images per bo…

  • tactile graphics
  • braille
  • STEM accessibility
  • image processing
  • machine learning
  • visual impairment
  • assistive technology
  • automation
  • accessible publishing