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• Eyes on the Palm: Investigating a Ring-Shaped Camera for Seamless Accessible Tactile Exploration

  Ayaka Tsutsui, Xiyue Wang, Hironobu Takagi, Yoichi Ochiai, Chieko Asakawa · 2026 · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Tsutsui and colleagues ask how the form factor of a camera-based assistive device shapes the way blind and low-vision (BLV) users coordinate their hands during tactile exploration of real museum exhibits. Smartphone apps such as Seeing AI and Be My AI are designed around a…

  wearable technology · assistive technology · blindness and low vision · visual impairment · tactile exploration

• SceneScout: Towards AI-Driven Access to Street Level Imagery for Blind Users

  Gaurav Jain, Leah Findlater, Cole Gleason · 2026 · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Jain, Findlater and Gleason present SceneScout, a prototype web interface that uses a multimodal large language model (GPT-4o) to make street level imagery — the panoramic pedestrian-height photography behind Apple Maps Look Around and Google Street View — directly usable by…

  accessibility · navigation · screen readers · AI · multimodal AI

• Beyond Descriptions: A Generative Scene2Audio Framework for Blind and Low-Vision Users to Experience Vista Landscapes

  Chitralekha Gupta, Jing Peng, Ashwin Ram, Shreyas Sridhar, Christophe Jouffrais, Suranga Nanayakkara · 2026 · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Scene description apps (Seeing AI, Be My AI, Envision) do a reasonable job of telling blind and low-vision (BLV) users what is in front of them, but they are built for utility - 'there is a chair'. They fail at the aesthetic, leisure, emotional experience of distant landscapes:…

  blind and low vision · sonification · spatial audio · generative AI · psychoacoustics

• Access to Interpretation: How Formal Cues Ground Interpretive Alt Text for Paintings

  Vera L. Zhong, Lucy Jiang, Kathryn E. Ringland · 2026 · Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’26)

  This CHI 2026 Extended Abstract examines a gap between mainstream alt text conventions and the interpretive work that paintings are designed to evoke. The authors argue that dominant guidance for alt text foregrounds brevity, objectivity, and functional equivalence — an approach…

  alt text · image description · blind and low vision · museum accessibility · cultural heritage

• WanderGuide: Indoor Map-less Robotic Guide for Exploration by Blind People

  Masaki Kuribayashi, Kohei Uehara, Allan Wang, Shigeo Morishima, Chieko Asakawa · 2025 · Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25)

  Kuribayashi and colleagues design WanderGuide, a suitcase-shaped robotic guide that supports blind people in recreational, open-ended exploration of indoor environments — wandering, browsing, window-shopping — rather than getting from A to B. The team frames a clear gap in the…

  assistive robotics · indoor navigation · blindness and low vision · visual impairment · recreational exploration

• ImageExplorer Deployment: Understanding Text-Based and Touch-Based Image Exploration in the Wild

  Ruolin Xu, Yuxuan Cai, Shuying Hou, Yu-Jung Chang, Anhong Guo · 2024 · Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents the real-world deployment and evaluation of ImageExplorer, an iOS application that enables blind and low-vision users to explore images through two complementary modalities: text-based sequential exploration and touch-based spatial exploration. The app was…

  image accessibility · screen readers · touch exploration · blind users · image description

• 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

• Privacy Concerns for Visual Assistance Technologies

  Abigale Stangl, Kristina Shiroma, Nathan Davis, Bo Xie, Kenneth R. Fleischmann, Leah Findlater, Danna Gurari · 2022 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This comprehensive study examines privacy concerns of blind users when sharing images and videos with visual assistance technologies (VATs) like Aira, Be My Eyes, and Seeing AI. The research addresses a fundamental tension: blind people must share visual data to receive…

  visual impairment · privacy · visual assistance technology · artificial intelligence · remote sighted assistance

• 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

• 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

• BrowseWithMe: An Online Clothes Shopping Assistant for People with Visual Impairments

  Abigale J. Stangl, Esha Kothari, Suyog D. Jain, Tom Yeh, Kristen Grauman, Danna Gurari · 2018 · Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2018)

  This paper from the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Texas at Austin addresses the inaccessibility of online clothes shopping for people with visual impairments through both empirical investigation and a prototype AI-powered assistant called BrowseWithMe. The…

  blindness · low vision · web accessibility · online shopping · computer vision

• "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

• Guiding Novice Web Workers in Making Image Descriptions Using Templates

  Valerie S. Morash, Yue-Ting Siu, Joshua A. Miele, Lucia Hasty, Steven Landau · 2015 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This study compares two approaches for using non-expert crowdworkers to create accessible descriptions of STEM images (charts, graphs, diagrams) for people who are blind or have print-reading disabilities. The researchers tested Free-Response Image Description (FRID), where…

  image description · alt text · crowdsourcing · human computation · STEM accessibility

• RegionSpeak: Quick Comprehensive Spatial Descriptions of Complex Images for Blind Users

  Yu Zhong, Walter S. Lasecki, Erin Brady, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2015 · Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2015)

  This paper introduces RegionSpeak, a mobile application that helps blind users get comprehensive spatial descriptions of complex visual scenes by combining image stitching with parallelized crowdsourced labeling. The authors identify a gap in existing visual question-answering…

  visual accessibility · crowdsourcing · image description · spatial awareness · blind users

• Does It Look Beautiful? Communicating Aesthetic Information about Artwork to the Visually Impaired

  Caroline Marie Galbraith · 2014 · Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper explores how aesthetic information about visual art is communicated to people who are visually impaired, based on observational data from a study where blind individuals and sighted companions explored an art gallery together on the University of Maryland, Baltimore…

  visual art · museum accessibility · blindness · image description · communication

• Crowdsourcing Platform for Workplace Accessibility

  Hironobu Takagi, Akihiro Kosugi, Shin Saito, Masayoshi Teraguchi · 2013 · Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from IBM Research Tokyo proposes Crowd Card, an intra-organizational crowdsourcing platform designed to improve workplace accessibility while maintaining confidentiality of business materials. The core problem is that modern workplaces are filled with inaccessible…

  crowdsourcing · workplace accessibility · image description · video captioning · document accessibility

• Interviewing Blind Photographers: Design Insights for a Smartphone Application

  Dustin Adams, Tory Gallagher, Alexander Ambard, Sri Kurniawan · 2013 · Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This short paper reports on interviews with 11 people with limited to no vision who take digital photographs independently, investigating how they take, store, organize, and share their photos. While prior research had addressed camera aiming assistance for blind photographers…

  visual impairment · blindness · photography · photo sharing · smartphone applications

18 results.