Papers

Cyborg Assemblages: how autistic adults construct sociotechnical networks to support cognitive function

Autism has become a popular context for accessible technology researchers, yet a majority of HCI projects for autism and ADHD do not engage in participatory method or otherwise involve disabled stakeholders in the project and research design. Prior inquiry has identified executive function as a common difficulty for w…

What Makes Civic Tech Initiatives To Last Over Time? Dissecting Two Global Cases

Civic tech initiatives dedicated to environmental issues have become a worldwide phenomenon and made invaluable contributions to data, community building, and publics. However, many of them stop after a relatively short time. Therefore, we studied two long-lasting civic tech initiatives of global scale, to understand…

An Accessible, Three-Axis Plotter for Enhancing Calligraphy Learning through Generated Motion

An Accessible, Three-Axis Plotter for Enhancing Calligraphy Learning through Generated Motion

Matched：Cathy Mengying Fang · Massachusetts Institute of Technology；Lingdong Huang · Massachusetts Institute of Technology；Zach Lieberman · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Technology Developments in Touch-Based Accessible Graphics: A Systematic Review of Research 2010-2020

This paper presents a systematic literature review of 292 publications from 97 unique venues on touch-based graphics for people who are blind or have low vision, from 2010 to mid-2020. It is the first review of its kind on touch-based accessible graphics. It is timely because it allows us to assess the impact of new t…

3D Printing for Accessible Education: A Case Study in Assistive Technology Adoption

3D printing is a mainstream technology enabling the affordable production of 3D models that may enhance access and understanding of graphics for students who are blind or have low vision (BLV). However, the potential usefulness of a new technology does not guarantee its adoption. This paper presents a case study in th…

Accessible Design is Mediated by Job Support Structures and Knowledge Gained Through Design Career Pathways

Digital designers often do not make their work accessible (e.g., websites failing criteria set by the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), and accessible design research discusses many solutions to address this problem (e.g., teaching accessibility within university design and technical courses). However, prio…

Matched：Sarah Andrew · Rochester Institute of Technology；Garreth W. Tigwell · Rochester Institute of Technology

“Customization is Key”: Reconfigurable Textual Tokens for Accessible Data Visualizations

Customization is crucial for making visualizations accessible to blind and low-vision (BLV) people with widely-varying needs. But what makes for usable or useful customization? We identify four design goals for how BLV people should be able to customize screen-reader-accessible visualizations: presence, or what conten…

Matched：Shuli Jones · Massachusetts Institute of Technology；Isabella Pedraza Pineros · Massachusetts Institute of Technology；Jonathan Zong · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Accessible Video Calling: Enabling Nonvisual Perception of Visual Conversation Cues

Nonvisually Accessible Video Calling (NAVC) is a prototype that detects visual conversation cues in a video call and uses audio cues to convey them to a user who is blind or low-vision. NAVC uses audio cues inspired by movie soundtracks to convey Attention, Agreement, Disagreement, Happiness, Thinking, and Surprise. W…

Matched：Brianna J. Tomlinson · Georgia Institute of Technology

Sound Forest: Evaluation of an Accessible Multisensory Music Installation

Sound Forest is a music installation consisting of a room with light-emitting interactive strings, vibrating platforms and speakers, situated at the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts. In this paper we present an exploratory study focusing on evaluation of Sound Forest based on picture cards and interviews. Since Sound…

Matched：Emma Frid · KTH Royal Institute of Technology；Hans Lindetorp · KTH Royal Institute of Technology；Kjetil Falkenberg Hansen · KTH Royal Institute of Technology

"Is This Seat Accessible for Me?": An Autoethnography of a Person With a Mobility Disability Using Interactive Seat Plans for Public Events

Spectating sports matches or concerts is a popular activity, but these public live events have yet to become more accessible to people with disabilities. Inspecting the corresponding interactive seat plan before purchasing tickets online can be necessary to avoid or prepare for barriers at these venues. Unfortunately,…

Matched：Lukas Strobel · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology；Jan Ole Rixen · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Developing Accessible Services: Understanding Current Knowledge and Areas for Future Support

When creating digital artefacts, it is important to ensure that the product being made is accessible to as much of the population as is possible. Many guidelines and supporting tools exist to assist reaching this goal. However, little is known about developers' understanding of accessible practice and the methods that…

Sounds Accessible: Envisioning Accessible Audio Media Futures with People with Aphasia

Audio-media, such as radio and podcasts, are a vital means to engage with global events, access education, or offer entertainment. However, for people with complex communication needs, such as aphasia, there can be accessibility challenges. While accessibility research has largely focused on audiovisual media, little…

ContAQT: Designing an Interactive Data Display to Make Multi-Pollutant Air Quality Data Accessible

Air pollution poses critical health and environmental risks, yet public communication of air quality data is typically reduced to a single Air Quality Index (AQI) value that obscures underlying complexity. Existing visualization tools reinforce this oversimplification, leaving key AQI messages unaddressed. This paper…

Matched：Yixuan Li · Georgia Institute of Technology；Jordan Hill · Georgia Institute of Technology；Zeyu Hua · Georgia Institute of Technology

TableNarrator: Making Image Tables Accessible to Blind and Low Vision People

The widespread use of image tables presents significant accessibility challenges for blind and low vision (BLV) people, limiting their access to critical data. Despite advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) for interpreting image tables, current solutions often fail to consider the specific needs of BLV users, l…

Matched：Sheng Zhou · School of Software Technology

DanmuA11y: Making Time-Synced On-Screen Video Comments (Danmu) Accessible to Blind and Low Vision Users via Multi-Viewer Audio Discussions

By overlaying time-synced user comments on videos, Danmu creates a co-watching experience for online viewers. However, its visual-centric design poses significant challenges for blind and low vision (BLV) viewers. Our formative study identified three primary challenges that hinder BLV viewers' engagement with Danmu: t…

Matched：Shuchang Xu · Hong Kong University of Science and Technology；Xiaofu Jin · Hong Kong University of Science and Technology；Huamin Qu · Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

AVscript: Accessible Video Editing with Audio-Visual Scripts

Sighted and blind and low vision (BLV) creators alike use videos to communicate with broad audiences. Yet, video editing remains inaccessible to BLV creators. Our formative study revealed that current video editing tools make it difficult to access the visual content, assess the visual quality, and efficiently navi…

Matched：Saelyne Yang · Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Toward Automatic Audio Description Generation for Accessible Videos

Video accessibility is essential for people with visual impairments. Audio descriptions describe what is happening on-screen, e.g., physical actions, facial expressions, and scene changes. Generating high-quality audio descriptions requires a lot of manual description generation. To address this accessibility obstacle…

Matched：Yujia Wang · Beijing Institute of Technology；Wei Liang · Beijing Institute of Technology

ScrAPIr: Making Web Data APIs Accessible to End Users

Users have long struggled to extract and repurpose data from websites by laboriously copying or scraping content from web pages. An alternative is to write scripts that pull data through APIs. This provides a cleaner way to access data than scraping; however, APIs are effortful for programmers and nigh-impossible for…

Matched：Tarfah Alrashed · Massachusetts Institute of Technology；Jumana Almahmoud · Massachusetts Institute of Technology；Amy X. Zhang · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Umwelt: Accessible Structured Editing of Multi-Modal Data Representations

We present Umwelt, an authoring environment for interactive multimodal data representations. In contrast to prior approaches, which center the visual modality, Umwelt treats visualization, sonification, and textual description as coequal representations: they are all derived from a shared abstract data model, such tha…

Matched：Jonathan Zong · Massachusetts Institute of Technology；Isabella Pedraza Pineros · Massachusetts Institute of Technology；Mengzhu (Katie) Chen · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I-VAMOS: Independent Voting with Accessible Multimodal Offline System for Visually Impaired Users

Independent and secret voting is a constitutional right, yet blind and low-vision voters (BLVs) continue to face barriers when casting their votes. Existing methods such as tactile templates often require braille literacy or assistance, while electronic ballot-marking devices raise cost and security concerns. We prese…

Matched：Gyeongdeok Kim · Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology；Chungman Lim · Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology；Gyungmin Jin · Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology