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• Better Vocabularies for Assistive Communication Aids: Connecting Terms Using Semantic Networks and Untrained Annotators

  Sonya Nikolova, Jordan Boyd-Graber, Christiane Fellbaum, Perry Cook · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents the design and evaluation of ViVA (Visual Vocabulary for Aphasia), an assistive communication tool that uses semantic networks to help people with aphasia find words more easily. The authors address a fundamental problem with existing AAC devices: their…

  aphasia · assistive communication · semantic networks · visual vocabularies · adaptive tools

• Customizing Directions in an Automated Wayfinding System for Individuals with Cognitive Impairment

  Alan L. Liu, Harlan Hile, Gaetano Borriello, Pat A. Brown, Mark Harniss, Henry Kautz, Kurt Johnson · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents the design and evaluation of a mobile wayfinding system that provides customized navigation directions to individuals with cognitive impairments such as traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, and intellectual disability. The central innovation is using a…

  cognitive impairment · wayfinding · navigation · mobile technology · Markov decision process

• Instant Tactile-Audio Map: Enabling Access to Digital Maps for People with Visual Impairment

  Zheshen Wang, Baoxin Li, Terri Hedgpeth, Teresa Haven · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents an automated system for converting standard digital map images into interactive tactile-audio maps that people who are blind can explore independently. The core problem addressed is that while online map services like Google Maps provide rich geographical…

  tactile maps · visual impairment · multimodal interaction · audio feedback · navigation

• Designing Judicious Interactions for Cognitive Assistance: The Acts of Assistance Approach

  Jérémy Bauchet, Hélène Pigot, Sylvain Giroux, Dany Lussier-Desrochers, Yves Lachapelle, Mounir Mokhtari · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents Archipel, a cognitive orthosis developed at the DOMUS Laboratory at the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, designed to guide people with cognitive impairments through complex activities of daily living such as meal preparation. The system takes a two-pronged…

  cognitive assistance · intellectual disability · smart home · activities of daily living · pervasive computing

• Collaborative Web Accessibility Improvement: Challenges and Possibilities

  Hironobu Takagi, Shinya Kawanaka, Masatomo Kobayashi, Daisuke Sato, Chieko Asakawa · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper reports on the Social Accessibility Project, an experimental service developed by IBM Research in Tokyo that uses collaborative metadata authoring to improve web accessibility. The system works through a three-part architecture: end users (primarily screen reader…

  web accessibility · collaborative accessibility · crowdsourcing · metadata · screen readers

• Real-Time Anomaly Detection for Traveling Individuals

  Tian-Shya Ma · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This short paper presents a real-time anomaly detection system designed to help individuals with cognitive impairments travel safely and independently on routine journeys such as commuting via public transportation. The system works by comparing a traveller's current GPS…

  cognitive impairment · navigation · location awareness · anomaly detection · safety

• Making Microsoft Excel Accessible: Multimodal Presentation of Charts

  Iyad Abu Doush, Enrico Pontelli, Dominic Simon, Tran Cao Son, Ou Ma · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents a system for making Microsoft Excel charts accessible to people with visual impairments through a combination of haptic force feedback and audio cues. The authors identify that while screen readers and specialised tools can handle tabular data in Excel, the…

  data visualization · haptic technology · sonification · visual impairment · charts

• How Much Does Expertise Matter? A Barrier Walkthrough Study with Experts and Non-Experts

  Yeliz Yesilada, Giorgio Brajnik, Simon Harper · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper investigates whether expertise matters in manual web accessibility evaluation by comparing results from 19 expert and 51 non-expert judges using the Barrier Walkthrough (BW) method. The BW method is an analytical technique based on heuristic walkthrough where…

  web accessibility · accessibility evaluation · barrier walkthrough · WCAG · evaluator effect

• TextSL: A Command-Based Virtual World Interface for the Visually Impaired

  Eelke Folmer, Bei Yuan, Dave Carr, Manjari Sapre · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents TextSL, a text-based client for the virtual world Second Life that enables access via screen readers. Second Life is a non-game virtual world where users control avatars to explore 3D environments, socialise with others, and interact with user-created objects…

  virtual worlds · visual impairment · screen readers · game accessibility · social interaction

• The One-Key Challenge: Searching for a Fast One-Key Text Entry Method

  I. Scott MacKenzie · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper presents SAK (Scanning Ambiguous Keyboard), a novel one-key text entry method designed for people who can only operate a single switch input. The design combines two established techniques — scanning keyboards (where items are highlighted sequentially and selected…

  text entry · switch access · scanning keyboard · ambiguous keyboard · motor disability

• Defining Virtualization Based System Abstractions for an Indoor Assistive Living for Elderly Care

  Nova Ahmed · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This short paper proposes a two-layer system architecture for monitoring and guiding elderly residents in an indoor assistive living centre using passive RFID technology. The system addresses the tension between providing adequate monitoring for safety and preserving residents'…

  aging · ambient assisted living · RFID · indoor positioning · privacy

• Enriching Web Information Scent for Blind Users

  Markel Vigo, Barbara Leporini, Fabio Paternò · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper investigates whether annotating web links with accessibility scores of their target pages can improve navigation efficiency for blind screen reader users. The core idea draws on information foraging theory: just as sighted users follow visual cues ("information…

  web accessibility · blind users · screen readers · information scent · information foraging

• Including Accessibility Within and Beyond Undergraduate Computing Courses

  Annalu Waller, Vicki L. Hanson, David Sloan · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper describes the University of Dundee's approach to integrating accessibility and inclusive design throughout its entire four-year undergraduate computing curriculum, rather than treating accessibility as a standalone topic or elective module. The School of Computing at…

  accessibility education · inclusive design · higher education · curriculum design · web accessibility

• 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-built haptic input device…

  blind children · orientation and mobility · haptic interfaces · audio interfaces · virtual environments

• Accessibility Commons: A Metadata Repository for Web Accessibility

  Shinya Kawanaka, Masatomo Kobayashi, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa · 2009 · ACM SIGWEB Newsletter, Summer 2009

  This short SIGWEB Newsletter article proposes Accessibility Commons (AC), a shared federated repository for externally authored web-accessibility metadata. The authors argue that accessibility cannot scale as long as fixes depend on the original site owner inlining alt text,…

  web accessibility · metadata · semantic transcoding · social accessibility · crowdsourcing

• Cognitively Motivated Features for Readability Assessment

  Lijun Feng, Noémie Elhadad, Matt Huenerfauth · 2009 · Proceedings of the 12th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2009)

  Feng, Elhadad, and Huenerfauth (2009) develop and evaluate an automatic readability-assessment tool targeted specifically at adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) — people in the 'mild' category (IQ 55-70), who comprise roughly 3% of the U.S. population. Rather than reusing…

  readability · automatic readability assessment · cognitive accessibility · intellectual disability · mild intellectual disability

• 20 years on: the Dexter Model of Hypertext and its impact on web accessibility

  Robert Dodd · 2008 · SIGACCESS Access. Comput.

  This paper examines the Dexter Reference Model of Hypertext, published in 1988, and asks whether the foundational assumptions it encodes still serve the needs of accessibility twenty years later. The Dexter Model was created as a superset description of what hypertext systems…

  hypertext models · HTML · assistive technology · adaptive content · web standards

• The CISNA model of accessible adaptive hypermedia

  Robert Dodd, Steve Green, Elaine Pearson · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents CISNA (Content, Inventory, Semantics, Navigation, Adaptation), a five-layer document model designed to make web content adaptable to individual user needs and capabilities. The research addresses a fundamental problem: as web pages become increasingly…

  adaptive hypermedia · abstract user interface · hypertext models · assistive technology · content adaptation

• Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity? W4A -- International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility 2007

  Yeliz Yesilada, Simon Harper · 2008 · SIGACCESS Access. Comput.

  This is the conference report for the 4th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A) 2007, held at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Canada, co-located with the World Wide Web (WWW) conference. The report summarizes the proceedings of a…

  Web 2.0 · semantic web · conference report · ARIA · assistive technology

• WebAnywhere: A Screen Reading Interface for the Web on Any Computer

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Craig M. Prince, Sangyun Hahn, Richard E. Ladner · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This short paper introduces WebAnywhere, a free web-based screen reader from the University of Washington that enables blind users to access the web from any computer with a standard browser and sound capability, without installing any software. The system addresses a critical…

  screen readers · blindness · web-based assistive technology · text-to-speech · digital equity

• One World, One Web ... But Great Diversity

  Brian Kelly, Liddy Nevile, EA Draffan, Sotiris Fanou · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This provocative paper challenges the dominant WAI/WCAG-centric model of web accessibility, arguing that its narrow focus on guideline conformance of individual digital resources fails to account for the diversity of user needs, contexts of use, and the realities of Web 2.0…

  WCAG · accessibility policy · social model of disability · learning disabilities · Web 2.0

• A Survey on the Accessibility Awareness of People Involved in Web Development Projects in Brazil

  Andre P. Freire, Cibele M. Russo, Renata P. M. Fortes · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents one of the largest surveys of its time examining how people involved in web development projects in Brazil perceive and address accessibility. The researchers conducted an exploratory study using a web-based questionnaire distributed across all 27 Brazilian…

  web accessibility · survey research · developer awareness · accessibility education · accessibility legislation

• An Accessibility Evaluation Platform: Borrowing from Web 2.0

  Yui-Liang Chen, Gina Lin · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper proposes a community-driven Accessibility Evaluation Platform for Taiwan, drawing on Web 2.0 principles to supplement the government-led accessibility compliance program administered by the Research, Development & Evaluation Commission (RDEC). At the time of writing,…

  accessibility evaluation · web 2.0 · crowdsourcing · community review · Taiwan

• WCAG 2.0: A Web Accessibility Standard for the Evolving Web

  Loretta Guarino Reid, Andi Snow-Weaver · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  Written by two members of the WCAG working group (from Google and IBM respectively), this paper explains the major design challenges faced in developing WCAG 2.0 and the strategies adopted to address them. WCAG 1.0, finalized in 1999, was designed for a web of static HTML pages…

  WCAG · web standards · accessibility guidelines · WAI · ARIA

• A Web Design Framework for Improved Accessibility for People with Disabilities (WDFAD)

  Rehema Baguma, Jude T. Lubega · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from Makerere University in Uganda proposes WDFAD (Web Design Framework for Improved Accessibility for People with Disabilities), a developer-oriented framework that repackages web accessibility requirements according to the three components of web applications:…

  web accessibility · accessibility framework · blind users · screen readers · web design