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• Investigating Laboratory and Everyday Typing Performance of Blind Users

  Hugo Nicolau, Kyle Montague, Tiago Guerreiro, André Rodrigues, Vicki L. Hanson · 2017 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper presents the first longitudinal study comparing blind users' touchscreen typing performance in laboratory versus everyday real-world settings. Over 12 weeks, five novice blind smartphone users participated in eight weekly laboratory sessions while also having their…

  visual impairment · text entry · touchscreen · mobile accessibility · longitudinal study

• Creating Accessible Local Government: The Process

  Vivienne Conway, Keith Fitzpatrick · 2017 · Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This short paper documents the end-to-end process the City of Cockburn, a local government authority in Western Australia, followed to develop an accessible replacement website. The paper provides a practical 9-step roadmap: (1) embed accessibility in official planning…

  government accessibility · WCAG compliance · procurement · organizational accessibility · case study

• Personal Perspectives on Using Automatic Speech Recognition to Facilitate Communication between Deaf Students and Hearing Customers

  James R. Mallory, Michael Stinson, Lisa Elliot, Donna Easton · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This experience report examines the use of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) via the WhatsApp smartphone app to facilitate communication between deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students and hearing business customers in real workplace settings. The study took place at the…

  automatic speech recognition · deaf and hard of hearing · workplace accessibility · deaf education · speech recognition

• Epidemiology as a Framework for Large-Scale Mobile Application Accessibility Assessment

  Anne Spencer Ross, Xiaoyi Zhang, James Fogarty, Jacob O. Wobbrock · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper introduces a novel conceptual framework for understanding mobile app accessibility by drawing an extended metaphor from epidemiology — the study of disease patterns, causes, and effects in populations. The core insight is that app accessibility is typically considered…

  mobile accessibility · accessibility testing · automated testing · Android · accessibility frameworks

• In-context Q&A to Support Blind People Using Smartphones

  André Rodrigues, Kyle Montague, Hugo Nicolau, João Guerreiro, Tiago Guerreiro · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17)

  This paper addresses a pervasive but understudied problem: the daily challenges blind people face when using smartphone applications go far beyond the touchscreen gesture difficulties that most accessibility research focuses on. The researchers conducted workshops with 42 blind…

  blindness · smartphone accessibility · screen readers · crowdsourcing · human computation

• Improving Smartphone Accessibility with Personalizable Static Overlays

  André Rodrigues, André Santos, Kyle Montague, Tiago Guerreiro · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17)

  This paper addresses a fundamental usability problem for blind smartphone users: the loss of interface consistency that occurred when physical keypad phones gave way to touchscreen smartphones. Feature phones had tactually recognizable keys, simpler interfaces, and consistent…

  blindness · smartphone accessibility · screen readers · mobile accessibility · personalization

• Investigating Microinteractions for People with Visual Impairments and the Potential Role of On-Body Interaction

  Uran Oh, Lee Stearns, Alisha Pradhan, Jon E. Froehlich, Leah Findlater · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17)

  This paper investigates how well microinteractions — brief, high-frequency mobile tasks that take sighted users only a few seconds to complete — are currently supported for people who are blind or visually impaired (VI). While modern smartphones are reasonably accessible through…

  microinteraction · on-body interaction · visual impairment · wearable technology · mobile accessibility

• BrailleSketch: A Gesture-based Text Input Method for People with Visual Impairments

  Mingzhe Li, Mingming Fan, Khai N. Truong · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17)

  This paper presents BrailleSketch, a gesture-based text input method for touchscreen smartphones designed for people with visual impairments who already know the Braille alphabet. Rather than requiring users to tap specific screen locations or use multi-finger chording (as with…

  text entry · braille · gesture interaction · visual impairment · mobile accessibility

• Personalized Assistive Web for Improving Mobile Web Browsing and Accessibility for Visually Impaired Users

  Dongsong Zhang, Lina Zhou, Judith O. Uchidiuno, Isil Y. Kilic · 2017 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper addresses a critical gap in mobile web accessibility: while screen readers enable blind users to access web content, they do not effectively support skimming—the ability to quickly scan content to find relevant information. The authors propose PAW (Personalized…

  mobile accessibility · screen readers · web adaptation · personalization · blindness

• Improving the Accessibility of Mobile OCR Apps Via Interactive Modalities

  Michael Cutter, Roberto Manduchi · 2017 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper addresses a critical usability challenge in mobile OCR for blind users: while OCR technology itself works well, it requires properly framed images at adequate resolution—something difficult to achieve without visual feedback. Blind users commonly hold the camera too…

  OCR · mobile accessibility · blindness · camera guidance · computer vision

• Accessible Touchscreen Technology for People with Visual Impairments: A Survey

  William Grussenmeyer, Eelke Folmer · 2017 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This comprehensive survey reviews the state of the art in touchscreen accessibility for people who are blind or have low vision, covering research from the mid-1990s through 2016. The authors organize the field by input modalities (gestural, voice, sensor-based) and output…

  touchscreen accessibility · mobile accessibility · visual impairment · screen readers · gestures

• People with Visual Impairment Training Personal Object Recognizers: Feasibility and Challenges

  Hernisa Kacorri, Kris M. Kitani, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Chieko Asakawa · 2017 · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  This paper explores whether people with visual impairments can train their own personalized object recognition systems using a smartphone camera and a small number of example photos. The authors address a fundamental limitation of existing object recognition tools for blind…

  object recognition · computer vision · blindness · transfer learning · personalization

• WearMail: On-the-Go Access to Information in Your Email with a Privacy-Preserving Human Computation Workflow

  Saiganesh Swaminathan, Raymond Fok, Fanglin Chen, Ting-Hao (Kenneth) Huang, Irene Lin, Rohan Jadvani, Walter S. Lasecki, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2017 · Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2017)

  WearMail is a conversational system that extracts specific information from a user's email via voice queries on wearable devices (such as smartwatches), using a novel privacy-preserving human computation workflow. The system addresses the challenge that email functions as…

  crowdsourcing · human computation · privacy · wearable technology · information extraction

• NavCog: Turn-by-Turn Smartphone Navigation Assistant for People with Visual Impairments or Blindness

  Dragan Ahmetovic, Cole Gleason, Kris M. Kitani, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This extended abstract presents NavCog, an open-source iOS smartphone navigation system designed to assist people with visual impairments or blindness in navigating complex indoor and outdoor environments. While many blind people can independently traverse familiar routes by…

  indoor navigation · visual impairment · blindness · assistive technology · Bluetooth beacons

• TactBack: VibroTactile braille output using smartphone and smartwatch for visually impaired

  Aritra Dhar, Aditya Nittala, Kuldeep Yadav · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This extended abstract presents TactBack, a system that uses vibration patterns on off-the-shelf smartphones and smartwatches to convey braille characters haptically. The system was motivated by the limitations of audio-based screen reader feedback (TalkBack) for visually…

  braille · haptic technology · wearable technology · visual impairment · deafblindness

• An empirical investigation of the situationally-induced impairments experienced by blind mobile device users

  Ali Abdolrahmani, Ravi Kuber, Amy Hurst · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates the situationally-induced impairments and disabilities (SIIDs) experienced by blind people when using mobile devices in real-world contexts. While prior SIID research has focused on sighted users encountering temporary impediments (like walking while…

  situational impairment · mobile accessibility · visual impairment · blindness · screen readers

• A Platform to Support Personalized Training of People with Disabilities

  Carlos Cardonha, Andrea Britto Mattos, Rodrigo Laiola Guimarães · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from IBM Research Brazil presents a two-component platform for creating and delivering personalized vocational training courses to people with multiple types of disabilities. The system consists of a web-based course-authoring portal for instructors and a tablet-based…

  intellectual disability · educational technology · personalization · vocational training · mobile accessibility

• Web Accessibility Guidelines for the 2020s

  Michael Cooper · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  Written by W3C/WAI staff member Michael Cooper, this paper provides an insider perspective on the strategic direction of web accessibility guidelines following the completion of the 2.0 suite — WCAG 2.0 (finalized 2008), ATAG 2.0 (2015), and UAAG 2.0 (2015). Cooper describes the…

  web accessibility · WCAG · WAI-ARIA · standards · guidelines

• Using Web Interaction to Monitor Parkinson's Disease Progression through Behavioural Inferences on the Web

  Julio Vega · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This doctoral consortium paper from the University of Manchester proposes a novel approach to monitoring Parkinson's Disease (PD) progression using passive smartphone data collection and web interaction analysis, replacing the intrusive wearable devices and scripted evaluation…

  health monitoring · Parkinson's disease · smartphones · machine learning · digital health

• LMS Weds WhatsApp: Bridging Digital Divide Using MIMs

  Jyotirmaya Mahapatra, Saurabh Srivastava, Kuldeep Yadav, Kundan Shrivastava, Om Deshmukh · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from Xerox Research Centre India reports on a three-month longitudinal field study integrating WhatsApp with a Learning Management System (TutorSpace) in a private engineering college on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India. The research addresses the digital divide in…

  digital divide · mobile accessibility · education accessibility · Global South accessibility · blended learning

• Evaluating the Mobile Web Accessibility of Electronic Text for Print Impaired People in Higher Education

  Neil Rogers, Mike Wald, E. A. Draffan · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from the University of Southampton presents an Accessibility Evaluation Framework for assessing how well mobile devices support electronic text (eText) reading for people with print impairments in higher education. Print disabilities are broadly defined following…

  print disabilities · mobile accessibility · education accessibility · dyslexia · visual impairment

• Real-Time Mobile Personalized Simulations of Impaired Colour Vision

  Rhouri MacAlpine, David R. Flatla · 2016 · Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '16)

  This paper extends personalized simulations of Impaired Colour Vision (ICV) to work in real time on mobile devices, enabling people with typical colour vision to see the world through the camera as someone with ICV would perceive it. At least 5% of the world population has some…

  color vision deficiency · color blindness · visual impairment · mobile accessibility · simulation

• How People with Low Vision Access Computing Devices: Understanding Challenges and Opportunities

  Sarit Felicia Anais Szpiro, Shafeka Hashash, Yuhang Zhao, Shiri Azenkot · 2016 · Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '16)

  This paper presents a contextual inquiry study examining how 11 people with low vision use mainstream computing devices (smartphones, tablets, and computers) to perform common tasks like reading email and browsing news. Low vision affects at least 3.3 million Americans over 40,…

  low vision · screen magnification · visual impairment · mobile accessibility · usability

• Blind Photographers and VizSnap: A Long-Term Study

  Dustin Adams, Sri Kurniawan, Cynthia Herrera, Veronica Kang, Natalie Friedman · 2016 · Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '16)

  This paper reports on a two-month longitudinal study with 13 blind participants (ages 18-65, nine totally blind and two with some light perception, seven adventitiously and six congenitally blind) using VizSnap, a free iPhone app designed to help blind people organize and browse…

  blindness · photography · mobile accessibility · social media · iPhone

• Designing Wearable Mobile Device Controllers for Blind People: A Co-Design Approach

  Catherine Feng · 2016 · Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '16)

  This poster paper explores the design space of wearable controllers that enable blind people to operate their smartphones more efficiently while on the go, without needing to directly interact with the phone's touchscreen. Blind people rely heavily on mobile phones for…

  blindness · wearable technology · mobile accessibility · co-design · interaction design