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• Benchmarking PDF Accessibility Evaluation: A Dataset and Framework for Assessing Automated and LLM-Based Approaches for Accessibility Testing

  Anukriti Kumar, Tanushree Padath, Lucy Lu Wang · 2025 · ASSETS 2025: 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper addresses a critical gap in PDF accessibility evaluation by introducing the first expert-validated benchmark dataset and standardized evaluation framework for assessing how well different tools and approaches can evaluate PDF accessibility. Despite PDFs being the…

  PDF accessibility · automated testing · large language models · WCAG · PDF/UA

• 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 problem in digital…

  social media accessibility · alternative text · image descriptions · crowdsourcing · assistive technology

• Understanding and Improving Drilled-Down Information Extraction from Online Data Visualizations for Screen-Reader Users

  Ather Sharif, Andrew M. Zhang, Katharina Reinecke, Jacob O. Wobbrock · 2023 · Proceedings of the 20th International Web for All Conference (W4A '23)

  This extended abstract presents enhancements to VoxLens, an open-source JavaScript plug-in that improves the accessibility of online data visualizations for screen-reader users (SRUs) through a multimodal approach. Over 7.6 million people in the United States use screen readers,…

  screen readers · data visualization accessibility · alternative text · sonification · blind and low vision

• Notably Inaccessible — Data Driven Understanding of Data Science Notebook (In)Accessibility

  Venkatesh Potluri, Sudheesh Singanamalla, Nussara Tieanklin, Jennifer Mankoff · 2023 · Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '23)

  This paper presents the first large-scale analysis of the accessibility of computational notebooks — interactive documents combining code, text, and data visualizations that have become the standard tool for data science work. The researchers analyzed 100,000 Jupyter notebooks…

  computational notebooks · data science · screen readers · blind and visually impaired · data visualization

• Cripping Data Visualizations: Crip Technoscience as a Critical Lens for Designing Digital Access

  Stacy Hsueh, Beatrice Vincenzi, Akshata Murdeshwar, Marianela Ciolfi Felice · 2023 · ASSETS 2023: The 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper applies crip technoscience as a critical, generative framework for rethinking how accessible data visualizations are designed. The authors argue that current approaches to visualization accessibility largely treat access as a technical problem to be solved by…

  data visualization · crip technoscience · crip theory · blind and low vision · speculative design

• AIDE: Automatic and Accessible Image Descriptions for Review Imagery in Online Retail

  Rachana Sreedhar, Nicole Tan, Jingyue Zhang, Kim Jin, Spencer Gregson, Eli Moreta-Feliz, Niveditha Samudrala, Shrenik Sadalgi · 2022 · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from the Wayfair Next team presents AIDE (Automatic Image Description Engine), a multi-modal system that automatically generates alt-text for user-submitted review photos on e-commerce sites. While product images on retail sites sometimes have alt-text, customer…

  alternative text · image description · online shopping · blindness and low vision · computer vision

• Toward supporting quality alt text in computing publications

  Candace Williams, Lilian de Greef, Ed Harris, Leah Findlater, Amy Pavel, Cynthia Bennett · 2022 · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates the state of alternative text for figures in computing research publications, an understudied context where figures often convey dense, complex visual information quite different from social media or news imagery. The researchers conducted two…

  alternative text · scientific figures · data visualization · screen readers · document accessibility

• Adee: Bringing Accessibility Right Inside Design Tools

  Samine Hadadi · 2021 · The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2021)

  This extended abstract introduces Adee, an accessibility testing plugin that integrates directly into popular design platforms — Adobe XD, Figma, and Sketch — to make accessibility checking a seamless part of the design workflow rather than an afterthought. The paper argues that…

  design tools · color contrast · color blindness · touch target size · alternative text

• Understanding Screen-Reader Users' Experiences with Online Data Visualizations

  Ather Sharif, Sanjana Shivani Chintalapati, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Katharina Reinecke · 2021 · ASSETS '21: The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  Data visualizations are ubiquitous on the web, communicating everything from health statistics to financial trends, yet their inherently visual nature creates profound barriers for the approximately 7.6 million screen-reader users in the United States. Sharif et al. conducted…

  screen readers · data visualization · web accessibility · blind users · low vision

• Going Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Image Descriptions to Satisfy the Information Wants of People Who are Blind or Have Low Vision

  Abigale Stangl, Nitin Verma, Kenneth R. Fleischmann, Meredith Ringel Morris, Danna Gurari · 2021 · ASSETS '21: The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  Current image description practices typically produce a single, one-size-fits-all description for each image, yet the same image can appear across vastly different contexts — news websites, e-commerce platforms, social media feeds, travel sites, and personal photo libraries —…

  image description · alternative text · blind · low vision · context-aware

• Making GIFs Accessible

  Cole Gleason, Amy Pavel, Himalini Gururaj, Kris Kitani, Jeffrey Bigham · 2020 · Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

  This Carnegie Mellon University study examines the accessibility of GIFs on social media, a visual medium that has become central to online conversation but remains largely inaccessible to people with vision impairments. The researchers conducted a multi-part investigation:…

  GIF accessibility · alternative text · audio description · blind · low vision

• Twitter A11y: A Browser Extension to Make Twitter Images Accessible

  Cole Gleason, Amy Pavel, Emma McCamey, Christina Low, Patrick Carrington, Kris M. Kitani, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2020 · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  This paper presents Twitter A11y, a browser extension designed to address the widespread lack of alternative text on images posted to Twitter. The authors note that while around 12% of Twitter content consists of images, only 0.1% of those images include user-provided alt text,…

  social media accessibility · alternative text · screen readers · image accessibility · optical character recognition

• Combining Semantic Tools for Automatic Evaluation of Alternative Texts

  Carlos Duarte, Carlos M. Duarte, Luís Carriço · 2019 · Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents SCREW v2, an updated algorithm for automatically assessing the quality of alternative texts for images on web pages from an accessibility perspective. The work is motivated by the EU Directive 2016/2102, which requires monitoring the accessibility of public…

  alternative text · automated accessibility testing · image accessibility · semantic analysis · computer vision

• X-Ray: Screenshot Accessibility via Embedded Metadata

  Sujeath Pareddy, Anhong Guo, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2019 · Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper introduces X-Ray, a system that preserves the accessibility of user interface content when it is captured as a screenshot. Screenshots strip away all semantic information — text structure, element roles, states, labels, and navigation order — leaving only pixels that…

  screen readers · alternative text · screenshots · image accessibility · metadata

• Making Memes Accessible

  Cole Gleason, Amy Pavel, Xingyu Liu, Patrick Carrington, Lydia B. Chilton, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2019 · Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2019)

  This paper presents two semi-automatic methods for making internet image macro memes accessible to people with vision impairments: rich alternative text descriptions and audio macro memes. Memes are a pervasive form of online communication, yet they are almost entirely…

  alternative text · blind · low vision · social media · image accessibility

• "It's almost like they're trying to hide it": How User-Provided Image Descriptions Have Failed to Make Twitter Accessible

  Cole Gleason, Patrick Carrington, Cameron Cassidy, Meredith Ringel Morris, Kris M. Kitani, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2019 · The World Wide Web Conference

  This paper presents the first large-scale empirical study of how Twitter's opt-in image description feature (launched in 2016) has affected the accessibility of images on the platform. The researchers analyzed 1.09 million tweets with images collected over five days in June…

  alternative text · social media accessibility · image accessibility · blindness · screen readers

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Web Accessibility: Is Conformance Evaluation a Way Forward?

  Shadi Abou-Zahra, Judy Brewer, Michael Cooper · 2018 · Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This short paper from three W3C/WAI staff members explores the potential and limitations of applying artificial intelligence to improve web accessibility, proposing accessibility conformance evaluation as a strategic pathway to accelerate AI adoption in this domain. The authors…

  artificial intelligence · web accessibility · WCAG · automated testing · machine learning

• Accessify: An ML Powered Application to Provide Accessible Images on Web Sites

  Shivam Singh, Anurag Bhandari, Nishith Pathak · 2018 · Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2018)

  This demonstration paper presents Accessify, a browser plugin that uses machine learning to automatically generate alternative text descriptions for all images on a website, injecting them into the page’s DOM so screen readers can access them. The system addresses the persistent…

  alternative text · image accessibility · machine learning · browser extension · computer vision

• Semantic Content Analysis Supporting Web Accessibility Evaluation

  Carlos Duarte, Inês Matos, Luís Carriço · 2018 · Proceedings of the 15th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper addresses a fundamental limitation of automated web accessibility evaluation tools: their inability to assess whether text alternatives actually describe the content they refer to. While tools can detect the presence of an alt attribute on an image, they cannot judge…

  automated testing · alternative text · semantic analysis · machine learning · image recognition

• Measuring the Impact of Automated Evaluation Tools on Alternative Text Quality: A Web Translation Study

  Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents the first empirical study on web accessibility conducted around a translation task, investigating how automated evaluation tools affect the quality of image text alternatives produced by web translators. Twenty-eight professional French translators were asked…

  alternative text · image accessibility · web translation · localization · automated testing

• Editor for accessible images in e-Learning platforms

  Sandra Sanchez-Gordon, Juan Estevez, Sergio Luján-Mora · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This extended abstract defines a set of twenty features that an HTML visual text editor should provide to support content authors in creating accessible images within e-learning platforms. The features were derived from reviewing published research on accessible images and…

  image accessibility · alternative text · e-learning accessibility · authoring tools · WCAG compliance

• An Uninteresting Tour Through Why Our Research Papers Aren't Accessible

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Erin L. Brady, Cole Gleason, Anhong Guo, David A. Shamma · 2016 · Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA 2016)

  This paper provides a candid examination of why academic research papers, delivered almost exclusively as PDFs, remain largely inaccessible to people with disabilities. The authors — who have spent years actively trying to improve the situation — trace the problem from PDF's…

  PDF accessibility · document accessibility · academic publishing · screen readers · alternative text

• "With most of it being pictures now, I rarely use it": Understanding Twitter's Evolving Accessibility to Blind Users

  Meredith Ringel Morris, Annuska Zolyomi, Catherine Yao, Sina Bahram, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Shaun K. Kane · 2016 · Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2016)

  This multi-method study examines how blind people use Twitter and the accessibility barriers they face as the platform shifts from text-based to increasingly image-heavy content. The researchers combined an online survey of 132 blind Twitter users, large-scale analysis of six…

  social media accessibility · blind users · alternative text · image description · Twitter

• Creating accessible PDFs for conference proceedings

  Erin Brady, Yu Zhong, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2015 · Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates the accessibility of PDF research papers published at major ACM conferences related to accessibility and human-computer interaction. The authors conducted a two-part analysis: first, an automated accessibility check of 1,811 papers from four years of CHI,…

  PDF accessibility · document accessibility · tagged PDF · PDF/UA · screen readers

• Evaluating the Accessibility of Line Graphs through Textual Summaries for Visually Impaired Users

  Priscilla Moraes, Gabriel Sina, Kathleen McCoy, Sandra Carberry · 2014 · Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper presents the SIGHT (Summarizing Information GrapHics Textually) system, which automatically generates natural language summaries of line graphs found in online popular media articles such as newspapers and magazines. The system addresses a persistent accessibility…

  data visualization · natural language generation · information graphics · blindness · screen readers