Literature Reviews

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

• Access and Empowerment: Commentary on "Computers and People with Disabilities"

  Richard E. Ladner (2008) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  Richard Ladner offers an optimistic assessment of progress since Glinert and York's 1992 call-to-arms, emphasizing how market forces—not just legal mandates—have driven accessibility improvements. With 16% of the U.S. population disabled and 10% of t…

  • universal design
  • ubiquitous computing
  • web accessibility
  • user empowerment
  • accessibility history
  • user-centered design

• From Automation to User Empowerment: Investigating the Role of a Semi-automatic Tool in Social Media Accessibility

  Leticia Seixas Pereira, Jose Coelho, Andre Rodrigues, Joao Guerreiro, Tiago Guerreiro, Carlos Duarte (2024) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents SONAAR (Social Networks Accessible Authoring), a semi-automatic tool designed to improve social media accessibility by combining AI-powered image recognition with user-generated descriptions. The research addresses a persistent pr…

  • social media accessibility
  • alternative text
  • image descriptions
  • crowdsourcing
  • assistive technology
  • user empowerment
  • automation

• Accessmonkey: A Collaborative Scripting Framework for Web Users and Developers

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Richard E. Ladner (2007) — Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper introduces Accessmonkey, a JavaScript-based scripting framework that enables web users, developers, and researchers to collaboratively improve web accessibility through client-side page modifications. Built as an extension of the Greasemon…

  • web accessibility
  • web transcoding
  • browser extensions
  • JavaScript
  • collaborative accessibility
  • alternative text
  • screen readers
  • blind users
  • developer tools
  • user empowerment