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• Three Modalities, Two Design Probes, One Prototype, and No Vision: Experience-Based Co-Design of a Multi-modal 3D Data Visualization Tool

  Sanchita S. Kamath, Aziz N. Zeidieh, Venkatesh Potluri, Sile O'Modhrain, Kenneth Perry, JooYoung Seo · 2026 · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26)

  Kamath et al. report an Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD) process in which five blind or low-vision (BLV) researchers and one sighted collaborator built a web-native, multimodal prototype for exploring 3D surface plots - a class of visualisation central to VUV spectroscopy,…

  blind and low vision · data visualization · 3D visualization · sonification · spatial audio

• TacChat: Exploring User Generation and Accessible Sharing via Tactile Graphics for the Blind and Visually Impaired

  Yuewen Zhang, Danning Li, Kexin Zhou, Pu Jiang, Jingyang Lyu, Kotaro Hara, Baoshui Chen, Shuai Gao, Yang Jiao · 2026 · Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26)

  Zhang and colleagues (Tsinghua University, Singapore Management University, and Beijing School for the Blind) flip the usual framing of tactile-graphics research: rather than asking how blind and low-vision (BLV) people can better consume tactile images created by sighted…

  tactile graphics · refreshable tactile display · blind and low vision · accessible authoring · social media accessibility

• AR Haptic-Audio Conversion for Non-Visual Product Understanding in Smartphone AR

  Satomi Tokida, Ayaka Tsutsui, Norimasa Kobori, Matthew Gillingham, Bektur Ryskeldiev · 2026 · Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26)

  Tokida and colleagues (Mercari R4D, University of Tokyo, University of Tsukuba) tackle a specific gap in e-commerce accessibility: the AR 'view-in-room' features now common in online marketplaces (IKEA Place, Amazon AR View) assume sighted interaction and leave blind and…

  blind and low vision · augmented reality · mobile AR · haptics · vibrotactile

• Exploring Object Status Recognition for Recipe Progress Tracking in Non-Visual Cooking

  Franklin Mingzhe Li, Kaitlyn Ng, Bin Zhu, Patrick Carrington · 2025 · ASSETS 2025: 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper presents OSCAR (Object Status Context Awareness for Recipes), a technical pipeline that uses object status recognition—tracking the condition and transformation of ingredients and tools—to support recipe progress tracking for blind and low vision (BLV) cooks. Unlike…

  blind and low vision · cooking accessibility · context awareness · object recognition · computer vision

• EditScribe: Non-Visual Image Editing with Natural Language Verification Loops

  Ruei-Che Chang, Yuxuan Liu, Lotus Zhang, Anhong Guo · 2024 · ASSETS '24: Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper introduces EditScribe, a prototype system that makes image editing accessible to blind and low vision (BLV) users through natural language interaction powered by large multimodal models (LMMs). Image editing is inherently visual and iterative — users need to see the…

  blind and low vision · image editing · generative AI · large multimodal models · natural language interaction

• A Recipe for Success? Exploring Strategies for Improving Non-Visual Access to Cooking Instructions

  Franklin Mingzhe Li, Ashley Wang, Patrick Carrington, Shaun K. Kane · 2024 · Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2024)

  This paper investigates how people with vision impairments access and follow cooking recipes, identifying practices, challenges, and design opportunities for more accessible kitchen technologies. The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 blind cooks (ranging…

  blind · visual impairment · cooking accessibility · recipe access · assistive technology

• Touchpad Mapper: Exploring Non-Visual Touchpad Interactions for Screen-Reader Users

  Ather Sharif, Venkatesh Potluri, Jazz R. X. Ang, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Jennifer Mankoff · 2024 · Proceedings of the 21st International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This technical note introduces Touchpad Mapper, a system that repurposes the laptop touchpad — a widely available but underutilized input device for screen-reader users — as a spatial interface for exploring 2D digital content non-visually. The authors argue that while touchpads…

  screen readers · blindness · touchpad · interaction design · input devices

• 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

• "If you've gone straight, now, you must turn left" - Exploring the use of a tangible interface in a collaborative treasure hunt for people with visual impairments

  Quentin Chibaudel, Wafa Johal, Bernard Oriola, Marc J-M Macé, Pierre Dillenbourg, Valérie Tartas, Christophe Jouffrais · 2020 · Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

  This paper from a collaboration between IRIT (Toulouse), UNSW Sydney, EPFL, and Université Toulouse investigates how tangible user interfaces — specifically a small graspable robot called the Cellulo — can mediate collaboration between two people with visual impairments in a…

  visual impairments · tangible user interface · collaborative learning · spatial cognition · wayfinding

• Exploring feasibility of wrist gestures for non-visual interactions with wearables

  Shirin Feiz, I. V. Ramakrishnan · 2019 · Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates the accessibility of wrist gestures as an input modality for people with visual impairments (PVIs) interacting with smartwatches. Smartwatches hold particular promise for PVIs: they are always available, enable one-handed use (important when the other…

  wearable technology · smartwatch · gesture-based interaction · visual impairment · blindness

• Evaluating Wrist-Based Haptic Feedback for Non-Visual Target Finding and Path Tracing on a 2D Surface

  Jonggi Hong, Alisha Pradhan, Jon E. Froehlich, Leah Findlater · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper investigates wrist-worn haptic wristbands as a means to provide directional hand guidance for blind and visually impaired users on a 2D surface. Precisely guiding a blind person's hand has applications ranging from tracing printed text to learning shapes and gestures,…

  haptic feedback · wearable technology · blindness · tactile accessibility · assistive technology

• Speed-Dial: A Surrogate Mouse for Non-Visual Web Browsing

  Syed Masum Billah, Vikas Ashok, Donald E. Porter, IV Ramakrishnan · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17)

  This paper presents Speed-Dial, a system that uses an off-the-shelf Microsoft Surface Dial as a surrogate mouse for non-visual web browsing. The core problem it addresses is the fundamental mismatch between how sighted and blind users interact with the web: sighted users can…

  screen readers · web accessibility · blindness · haptic technology · input devices

• AudioDraw: User Preferences in Non-Visual Diagram Drawing for Touchscreens

  William Grussenmeyer, Eelke Folmer · 2016 · Proceedings of the 13th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates how people who are blind can independently create visual diagrams on touchscreen tablets, addressing a significant gap in accessibility. Diagram-building features in productivity tools like MS Word, PowerPoint, and UML editors are largely inaccessible…

  blindness · touchscreen accessibility · diagram creation · non-visual interaction · STEM accessibility

• Pushing the Raman principle

  Clayton Lewis · 2013 · Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper explores the implications of what the author calls the "Raman Principle," attributed to T.V. Raman: "The way to think about the visual system is as a way to answer queries against a spatial database. If you have an alternate way to ask the queries and get the answers,…

  visual programming · blindness · non-visual interaction · screen readers · programming accessibility

• Using simultaneous audio sources to speed-up blind people's web scanning

  João Guerreiro · 2013 · Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This doctoral consortium paper proposes using multiple simultaneous audio sources to help blind users scan web content faster. The core problem is that screen readers present information sequentially — one item at a time — while sighted users can visually scan an entire page at…

  blindness · screen readers · spatial audio · web navigation · auditory perception

• Accessible Photo Album: Enhancing the Photo Sharing Experience for People with Visual Impairment

  Susumu Harada, Daisuke Sato, Dustin W. Adams, Sri Kurniawan, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa · 2013 · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13)

  This paper investigates how blind and partially sighted people can be supported not only in capturing photographs but in organising, recalling, and sharing them afterwards — a step that the authors argue has been largely neglected in prior blind-photography research. The study…

  blindness and low vision · mobile accessibility · assistive technology · photography · audiophotography

• An Intuitive Accessible Web Automation User Interface

  Yury Puzis, Yevgen Borodin, Faisal Ahmed, I. V. Ramakrishnan · 2012 · Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper proposes and evaluates an intuitive web automation interface designed specifically for blind screen reader users. The authors observe that while the visual web has become increasingly sophisticated, assistive technology has not kept pace — blind users face high…

  web automation · screen readers · blind users · form filling · user study

• Why Read if You Can Skim: Towards Enabling Faster Screen Reading

  Faisal Ahmed, Yevgen Borodin, Yury Puzis, I. V. Ramakrishnan · 2012 · Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper investigates how to bring the speed-reading technique of skimming — widely used by sighted readers to quickly get the gist of content — to blind screen reader users who face chronic information overload when listening to web content sequentially. The authors observe…

  screen readers · skimming · speed reading · blind users · text summarization

• On the Audio Representation of Radial Direction

  Susumu Harada, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa · 2011 · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11)

  This paper proposes a new primitive for auditory displays — radial direction — and evaluates a concrete mapping of vowel-like sounds to eight cardinal and ordinal directions. The authors observe that almost all prior sonification work has mapped data to linear sound properties…

  sonification · auditory display · auditory interface · non-visual interaction · eyes-free interaction

• Sasayaki: Augmented Voice Web Browsing Experience

  Daisuke Sato, Shaojian Zhu, Masatomo Kobayashi, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa · 2011 · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11)

  This paper introduces Sasayaki (Japanese for 'whisper'), a prototype that augments the standard screen-reader voice with a second, physically separated synthesised voice that whispers contextually relevant hints — for example 'entering main content', 'skipped the main', 'the…

  screen readers · auditory interface · voice browser · web accessibility · blindness and low vision

• Audio Access to Calendars

  Andy Brown, Caroline Jay, Simon Harper · 2010 · Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper addresses a specific but widespread accessibility problem: pop-up calendar date pickers on the web are effectively unusable by people with visual impairments. These JavaScript widgets dynamically insert tabular calendar content into the page when a date field receives…

  visual impairment · screen readers · dynamic content · Web 2.0 · date picker

• Audio Presentation of Auto-Suggest Lists

  Andy Brown, Caroline Jay, Simon Harper · 2009 · Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper investigates how to make auto-suggest lists (ASLs) — the dropdown suggestions that appear as users type in search boxes and form fields — accessible through audio for visually impaired users. Part of the SASWAT (Structured Accessibility Stream for Web 2.0 Access…

  visual impairment · screen readers · dynamic content · Web 2.0 · auto-suggest

• 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

• Improving Accessibility to Statistical Graphs: The iGraph-Lite System

  Leo Ferres, Petro Verkhogliad, Gitte Lindgaard, Louis Boucher, Antoine Chretien, Martin Lachance · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from Carleton University and Statistics Canada presents iGraph-Lite, a system that makes statistical graphs accessible to blind and visually impaired people by generating natural language descriptions and providing an interactive navigation tool for exploring graph…

  data visualization accessibility · graph accessibility · natural language generation · screen readers · blindness

• Using an Audio Interface to Assist Users Who are Visually Impaired with Steering Tasks

  Robert F. Cohen, Valerie Haven, Jessica A. Lanzoni, Arthur Meacham, Joelle Skaff, Michael Wissell · 2006 · Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper presents results from an ongoing study of PLUMB (exPLoring graphs at UMB), a software system that uses audio feedback and a pen-based Tablet PC interface to make relational graphs and diagrams accessible to users who are blind. Graphs — consisting of vertices (nodes)…

  visual impairment · sonification · graph accessibility · audio interface · tablet PC