Literature Reviews

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

• 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

• Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

  Karyn A. Moffatt, Joanna McGrenere (2007) — Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '07)

  Moffatt and McGrenere present an empirical study at the University of British Columbia investigating the underlying causes of pen-based target acquisition difficulty on a Tablet PC, with explicit attention to how age affects targeting ability. Thirty…

  • target acquisition
  • pen-based interaction
  • stylus
  • tablet PC
  • older adults
  • aging
  • inclusive design
  • universal usability
  • Fitts' law
  • motor accessibility
  • input methods
  • menu interaction
  • usability testing

• iSonic: Interactive Sonification for Non-visual Data Exploration

  Haixia Zhao, Catherine Plaisant, Ben Shneiderman (2005) — Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper presents iSonic, an interactive sonification tool developed at the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab that enables vision-impaired users to explore geo-referenced statistical data such as population distribution, crime r…

  • sonification
  • data visualization
  • visual impairment
  • auditory display
  • non-visual interaction
  • data exploration
  • spatial audio
  • universal usability
  • keyboard accessibility

• Towards A Universally Usable Human Interaction Proof: Evaluation of Task Completion Strategies

  Graig Sauer, Jonathan Lazar, Harry Hochheiser, Jinjuan Feng (2010) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper addresses a critical accessibility barrier: CAPTCHAs and human-interaction proofs (HIPs) that effectively lock people with visual impairments out of web services. Prior research showed that blind users could only solve audio CAPTCHAs about…

  • CAPTCHA
  • blind users
  • screen readers
  • universal usability
  • web security
  • authentication

• Teach or Design? How Older Adults' Use of Ticket Vending Machines Could Be More Effective

  Michael Sengpiel (2016) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This study addresses the "teach or design" debate in accessible technology by comparing two interventions to improve older adults' use of ticket vending machines (TVMs). The research recruited 62 older adults (mean age 68) and 62 younger adults (mean…

  • older adults
  • public access systems
  • universal usability
  • computer literacy
  • kiosk design
  • training

• The Impact of Accessibility Assessment in Macro Scale Universal Usability Studies of the Web

  Rui Lopes, Luís Carriço (2008) — Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2008)

  This paper introduces Web Interaction Environments (WIEs), a modelling framework for studying universal usability of the web at large scale. The authors argue that existing approaches to accessibility evaluation treat audiences as homogeneous groups,…

  • universal usability
  • audience modelling
  • web accessibility
  • WCAG evaluation
  • Wikipedia
  • large-scale study
  • ontology
  • accessibility metrics

• Designing Beneath the Surface of the Web

  Sarah Horton (2006) — Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper reframes web accessibility as fundamentally a source code design problem, arguing that designers focus almost exclusively on the visual "surface" of web pages — colors, typography, layouts — while neglecting the underlying code layer that …

  • semantic HTML
  • web design
  • universal usability
  • nonvisual access
  • screen readers
  • mobile accessibility
  • document structure
  • design principles