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• Dual Educational Electronic Textbooks: The Starlight Platform

  Dimitris Grammenos, Anthony Savidis, Yannis Georgalis, Themistoklis Bourdenas, Constantine Stephanidis · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) in Crete, Greece presents Starlight, a software platform for creating and reading multimodal interactive electronic textbooks that provide a Dual User Interface — an interface concurrently accessible by…

  accessible publishing · electronic textbook · blind students · inclusive education · dual user interface

• Accessible spaces: navigating through a marked environment with a camera phone

  Kee-Yip Chan, Roberto Manduchi, James Coughlan · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This short Assets '07 demonstration paper from UC Santa Cruz and the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute describes a camera-phone-based wayfinding system for blind travellers. The core idea is to deploy small, cheap, pie-shaped colour markers in an environment — on walls,…

  wayfinding · navigation · blindness · visual impairment · computer vision

• SIBYLLE: a system for alternative communication adapting to the context and its user

  Tonio Wandmacher, Jean-Yves Antoine, Franck Poirier · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '07)

  This paper describes the latest version of SIBYLLE, an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system developed at the Université François Rabelais and the Université Européenne de Bretagne for users with severe motor and speech impairments — including cerebrally and…

  augmentative and alternative communication · AAC · word prediction · virtual keyboard · single switch

• Loudmouth: Modifying Text-to-Speech Synthesis in Noise

  Rupal Patel, Michael Everett, Eldar Sadikov · 2006 · Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This short paper from Northeastern University presents Loudmouth, a modified text-to-speech synthesizer that emulates the Lombard effect — the natural way humans adjust their speech in noisy environments — to improve synthesized speech intelligibility in noise. Standard TTS…

  text-to-speech · speech synthesis · AAC · Lombard effect · speech intelligibility

• VoxBoox: A System for Automatic Generation of Interactive Talking Books

  Aanchal Jain, Gopal Gupta · 2006 · Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This poster paper from the University of Texas at Dallas presents VoxBoox, a system that automatically converts HTML-coded digital books into interactive talking books accessible via telephone. The system works by translating HTML pages into VoiceXML — the W3C standard markup…

  talking books · VoiceXML · aural navigation · visual impairment · blind users

• Introduction to the Talking Points Project

  Scott Gifford, Jim Knox, Jonathan James, Atul Prakash · 2006 · Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper introduces the Talking Points project from the University of Michigan, a system that attaches digital information to physical places and objects using passive RFID tags, creating an accessible "augmented reality" for blind and visually impaired users. The motivation…

  visual impairment · RFID · wayfinding · location awareness · ubiquitous computing

• A System for Creating Personalized Synthetic Voices

  Debra Yarrington, Chris Pennington, John Gray, H. Timothy Bunnell · 2005 · Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper presents the ModelTalker Voice Creation System, a tool that enables individuals to create personalized synthetic voices with unrestricted vocabulary for use in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices. The system addresses a significant problem in AAC:…

  speech synthesis · voice banking · AAC · amyotrophic lateral sclerosis · text-to-speech

• 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 translation systems and screen…

  braille · visual impairment · Indian languages · multilingual accessibility · screen reader

• The User Experience: Designs and Adaptations

  Vicki L. Hanson · 2004 · Proceedings of the 2004 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This keynote-style paper from IBM's Watson Research Center by Vicki Hanson argues that web accessibility standards and guidelines, while necessary, do not guarantee a usable or satisfying experience for people with disabilities. The paper distinguishes between accessibility…

  low vision · aging · cognitive accessibility · user experience · personalization

• Design and Development of an Indoor Navigation and Object Identification System for the Blind

  Andreas Hub, Joachim Diepstraten, Thomas Ertl · 2003 · Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '04)

  This paper presents a multi-sensor orientation assistant for blind users navigating unknown indoor environments. The system addresses three core problems identified by blind users: determining one's position, determining head direction and movement direction, and identifying…

  indoor navigation · blindness and low vision · object recognition · orientation and mobility · mobile technology

• Older Adults' Evaluations of Speech Output

  Lorna Lines, Kate S. Hone · 2002 · Proceedings of the Fifth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets 02)

  This paper investigates older adults' subjective evaluations of different speech output voices in the context of an Intelligent Home System (IHS) designed to help older people live independently. Given that 66% of people with visual impairments in the UK are over 75, and that…

  speech output · older adults · aging · smart home · visual impairment

• User Interface of a Nonvisual Table Navigation Method

  Chieko Asakawa, Takashi Itoh · 1999 · CHI '99 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  This two-page CHI '99 late-breaking-results extended abstract addresses a problem that was central to the early accessible web: HTML tables were everywhere — used both for tabular data and, at the time, as a layout device — but talking web browsers read them strictly…

  web accessibility · screen readers · voice browser · table accessibility · blindness and low vision

• User Interface of a Home Page Reader

  Chieko Asakawa, Takashi Itoh · 1998 · Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '98)

  This paper from IBM Japan's Tokyo Research Laboratory describes the design and evaluation of Home Page Reader, one of the earliest dedicated web browsers for blind users, which became an IBM Japan product in October 1997. The paper opens by framing the information access problem…

  screen readers · web accessibility · blindness · text-to-speech · nonvisual web access

• Emacspeak — Direct Speech Access

  T. V. Raman · 1996 · Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper by T. V. Raman (then at Adobe Systems, developed while at Digital Equipment Corporation's Cambridge Research Lab) presents Emacspeak, a speech output subsystem for Emacs that provides what the author terms "direct speech access" to UNIX workstations. Raman draws a…

  screen reader · speech output · blindness and low vision · UNIX accessibility · text-to-speech

• Improving the Usability of Speech-Based Interfaces for Blind Users

  Ian J. Pitt, Alistair D. N. Edwards · 1996 · Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper from the University of York examines the usability problems inherent in speech-based interfaces for blind computer users and presents a study comparing how blind and sighted subjects process information delivered through synthetic speech. The authors identify six key…

  blindness and low vision · screen reader · speech synthesis · usability · speech dialogue design

• A system for teaching speech to profoundly deaf children using synthesized acoustic and articulatory patterns

  E. Keate, H. Javkin, N. Antonanzas-Barroso, R. Zou · 1994 · Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This paper describes a PC-based computer-assisted speech training system for profoundly deaf children that integrates a text-to-speech (TTS) synthesizer to generate both acoustic and articulatory models for any typed utterance. The system addresses a fundamental limitation of…

  deaf education · speech training · text-to-speech · palatography · visual feedback

• Screen Reader/2: Access to OS/2 and the Graphical User Interface

  Jim Thatcher · 1994 · Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This paper describes IBM Screen Reader/2, a screen access system that enabled blind users to interact with the OS/2 graphical user interface (GUI), Windows programs running under OS/2, and text-mode DOS and OS/2 programs. The system evolved from nearly a decade of development…

  screen readers · graphical user interface · blind users · off-screen model · text-to-speech

• Interactive audio documents

  T. V. Raman, David Gries · 1994 · Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '94)

  This paper describes the browsing component of AsTeR (Audio System for Technical Readings), an interactive computing system developed by T. V. Raman that audio-formats electronic documents written in LaTeX to produce navigable audio documents. The paper addresses a fundamental…

  mathematical accessibility · audio formatting · screen readers · document accessibility · blind and low vision