Literature Reviews

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

• RAVEN: Realtime Accessibility in Virtual ENvironments for Blind and Low-Vision People

  Xinyun Cao, Kexin Phyllis Ju, Chenglin Li, Venkatesh Potluri, Dhruv Jain (2026) — Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  RAVEN is a GenAI-powered system enabling blind and low-vision (BLV) users to query and modify 3D virtual environments in real time through natural language. Rather than relying on developer-defined static accessibility features (such as fixed audio d…

  • blind and low vision
  • virtual environments
  • generative AI
  • 3D accessibility
  • natural language interaction
  • conversational programming
  • game accessibility
  • large language models
  • runtime accessibility

• Modeling Educational Software for People with Disabilities: Theory and Practice

  Nelson Baloian, Wolfram Luther, Jaime Sánchez (2002) — Proceedings of the Fifth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets 02)

  This paper proposes a unified modelling framework for developing educational software for people with sensory disabilities, drawing on two existing systems as case studies: AudioDoom for blind children and Whisper for hearing-impaired users. The auth…

  • accessible education
  • blind users
  • deaf users
  • sensory disabilities
  • audio games
  • spatial sound
  • virtual environments
  • tutoring systems
  • modelling methodology
  • cognitive development

• Making VRML Accessible for People with Disabilities

  Sandy Ressler, Qiming Wang (1998) — Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This paper from researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) presents a taxonomy of techniques for making Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) environments accessible to people with disabilities. Written at a time when…

  • virtual reality
  • VRML
  • virtual environments
  • audio feedback
  • spatialized audio
  • keyboard navigation
  • speech input
  • navigational aids
  • text descriptions

• Usability of a multimodal videogame to improve navigation skills for blind children

  Jaime Sánchez, Mauricio Sáenz, Miguel Ripoll (2009) — Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents a usability evaluation of two complementary tools designed to help blind school-aged children develop orientation and mobility (O&M) skills in closed, unfamiliar spaces. The first tool is the Digital Clock Carpet (DCC), a custom-b…

  • blind children
  • orientation and mobility
  • haptic interfaces
  • audio interfaces
  • virtual environments
  • navigation
  • usability evaluation
  • assistive gaming

• Usability of a Multimodal Video Game to Improve Navigation Skills for Blind Children

  Jaime Sánchez, Mauricio Saenz, Jose Miguel Garrido (2010) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents an evaluative study of a multimodal system combining a custom haptic device (Digital Clock Carpet) with a 3D audio-based video game (MOVA3D) to develop orientation and mobility (O&M) skills in blind school-aged children. The Digit…

  • blindness
  • orientation and mobility
  • haptic interface
  • audio games
  • spatial cognition
  • children
  • virtual environments
  • multimodal interaction

• O&M Indoor Virtual Environments for People Who Are Blind: A Systematic Literature Review

  Agebson Rocha Façanha, Ticianne Darin, Windson Viana, Jaime Sánchez (2020) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This systematic literature review examines virtual environments designed to support indoor orientation and mobility (O&M) training for people who are blind. The authors analyzed 51 papers describing 32 distinct O&M virtual environments, filtering fro…

  • orientation and mobility
  • O&M training
  • virtual environments
  • blindness
  • visual impairment
  • spatial audio
  • haptic feedback
  • wayfinding
  • mental maps
  • systematic review

• Sensory Substitution Training for Users Who Are Blind with Dynamic Stimuli, Games and Virtual Environments

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

  This paper explores whether gamification and dynamic training can address one of the major barriers to sensory substitution device (SSD) adoption: the long, arduous learning process. SSDs like EyeMusic convert visual information into sound, enabling …

  • sensory substitution
  • blindness
  • congenital blindness
  • visual rehabilitation
  • gamification
  • training
  • auditory interface
  • EyeMusic
  • virtual environments
  • game accessibility

• Echolocation as an Accessible Navigation Tool in a Virtual 3D Environment

  Mai Ricaplaza Thøgersen, Rasmus Jens Frølich Kjeldsen (2024) — Assets '24: Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper investigates whether active echolocation — emitting a sound and interpreting its echo — can serve as a viable navigation tool for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals in virtual 3D environments. Virtual spaces remain overwhelmingly visua…

  • virtual environments
  • echolocation
  • blind and low vision
  • spatial navigation
  • sonic design space
  • user study