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• Technology for Just-in-Time In-Situ Learning of Facial Affect for Persons Diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

  Miriam Madsen, Rana el Kaliouby, Matthew Goodwin, Rosalind Picard · 2008 · Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This MIT Media Lab paper presents a wearable technology system designed to help adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) learn to recognize and interpret facial expressions during real-time social interactions with their everyday companions. The system combines a…

  autism · affective computing · facial affect · emotion recognition · wearable technology

• Text Entry for Mobile Devices and Users with Severe Motor Impairments: HandiGlyph, a Primitive Shapes Based Onscreen Keyboard

  Mohammed Belatar, Franck Poirier · 2008 · Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper presents HandiGlyph, a text input method for mobile devices designed for users with severe motor disabilities such as Cerebral Palsy, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Locked-In Syndrome, and quadriplegia. The system is built on the UniGlyph principle: each letter of the…

  text entry · motor disability · on-screen keyboard · AAC · scanning input

• Enabling the Legally Blind in Classroom Note-Taking

  David Hayden, Dirk Colbry, John A. Black Jr, Sethuraman Panchanathan · 2008 · Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper demonstrates the CUbiC Note Taker, a portable assistive device developed at Arizona State University that enables students who are legally blind to independently take notes in classroom settings. The system addresses multiple limitations of existing accommodations:…

  low vision · legal blindness · assistive technology · education · note-taking

• Social Accessibility: Achieving Accessibility through Collaborative Metadata Authoring

  Hironobu Takagi, Shinya Kawanaka, Masatomo Kobayashi, Takashi Itoh, Chieko Asakawa · 2008 · Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This IBM Research Tokyo paper proposes Social Accessibility, a system that applies social computing principles to web accessibility by enabling a worldwide community of volunteers to collaboratively create external accessibility metadata for inaccessible websites. The core…

  web accessibility · social computing · collaborative authoring · metadata · web transcoding

• Automation of Repetitive Web Browsing Tasks with Voice-Enabled Macros

  Yevgen Borodin · 2008 · Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper proposes an approach for automating repetitive web browsing tasks through personalized macros with a speech-enabled interface, implemented within the HearSay non-visual web browser at Stony Brook University. The core problem is that non-visual aural web browsing…

  screen reader · web accessibility · non-visual browsing · web macro · voice interface

• A Demonstration of PhotoTacs: A Simple Image-Based Phone Dialing Interface for People with Cognitive or Visual Impairments

  Michael J. Astrauskas, John A. Black Jr, Sethuraman Panchanathan · 2008 · Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper from Arizona State University's Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing demonstrates PhotoTacs, an image-based phone book application for smart phones designed for people with cognitive disabilities, visual impairments, or illiteracy. The motivation is that modern…

  cognitive accessibility · visual impairment · mobile accessibility · simplified interface · assistive technology

• Low-Cost Accelerometry-Based Posture Monitoring System for Stroke Survivors

  Sonia Arteaga, Jessica Chevalier, Andrew Coile, Andrew William Hill, Serdar Sali, Sangheeta Sudhakhrisnan, Sri H. Kurniawan · 2008 · Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This paper from the University of California Santa Cruz reports a low-cost wearable posture monitoring system for stroke survivors, costing approximately $100 for the full prototype. Stroke patients are believed to benefit from maintaining good posture during early…

  stroke rehabilitation · wearable technology · accelerometer · posture monitoring · physical therapy

• Note-Taker: Enabling Students Who Are Legally Blind to Take Notes in Class

  David Hayden, Dirk Colbry, John A. Black Jr, Sethuraman Panchanathan · 2008 · Proceedings of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '08)

  This full paper from Arizona State University presents the CUbiC Note-Taker in detail, including its motivation, design principles, and results from two extensive case studies totaling over 200 hours of in-class use. The paper opens with a compelling first-person account from…

  low vision · legal blindness · assistive technology · education · note-taking

• Early Diagnosis of Autism through Analysis of Pre-Speech Vocalizations

  Keshi Dai · 2007 · SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing

  This paper proposes an approach for early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by computationally analyzing the pre-speech vocalizations of infants aged 6 to 18 months. The author notes that while autism can be reliably diagnosed by age 3, and potentially as early as 12…

  autism spectrum disorder · early diagnosis · speech recognition · pre-speech vocalization · early intervention

• Profiling Learners with Special Needs for Custom E-Learning Experiences, a Closed Case?

  Paola Salomoni, Silvia Mirri, Stefano Ferretti, Marco Roccetti · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the University of Bologna tackles the problem of creating comprehensive learner profiles that capture both user accessibility needs and device capabilities — two dimensions that existing standards addressed separately but not together. The authors argue that no…

  e-learning · user profiling · content adaptation · assistive technology · device capabilities

• Web Browser Accessibility Using Open Source Software

  Željko Obrenović, Jacco van Ossenbruggen · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents AMICO:WEB, a middleware infrastructure designed to integrate open source and free software components into mainstream web browsers to improve accessibility. The authors from CWI Amsterdam identify a core problem: while the open source community has produced…

  open source · middleware · multimodal interaction · browser extensions · assistive technology

• Ajax Live Regions: Chat as a Case Example

  Peter Thiessen, Charles Chen · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents one of the earliest practical implementations of WAI-ARIA live regions, using an accessible Ajax chat application called Reef Chat as a proof of concept. The authors — Peter Thiessen from the University of Toronto's Adaptive Technology Resource Centre and…

  WAI-ARIA · ARIA live regions · AJAX · Web 2.0 · screen readers

• Accessibility of Emerging Rich Web Technologies: Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web

  Michael Cooper · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This keynote paper by Michael Cooper of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative examines the accessibility challenges and opportunities created by the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies in the mid-2000s. Cooper frames Web 2.0 as a paradigm shift characterised by greater…

  WAI-ARIA · Web 2.0 · Semantic Web · rich internet applications · web standards

• Mathematics on the Web: Emerging Opportunities for Visually Impaired People

  Cristian Bernareggi, Dominique Archambault · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from the @Science European thematic network surveys the state of the art in making mathematical content on the web accessible to visually impaired people, arguing that MathML adoption is the key to unlocking accessibility. The authors explain a fundamental challenge:…

  mathematical accessibility · visual impairment · blind users · MathML · braille

• Using a CMS to Create Fully Accessible Websites

  Sébastien Rainville-Pitt, Jean-Marie D'Amour · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This demonstration paper presents Edimaster Plus, a content management system developed over five years by Netic Hypermedia Inc. in Quebec, Canada, designed from the ground up to generate fully accessible websites meeting all three WAI priority levels. The paper addresses a…

  web accessibility · content management systems · authoring tools · WCAG compliance · assistive technology

• Accessibility for Simple to Moderate-Complexity DHTML Web Sites

  Cynthia C. Shelly, George Young · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This detailed technical paper from Microsoft provides practical design and coding techniques for making Dynamic HTML and AJAX applications accessible using the browser and assistive technology capabilities available in 2007 — deliberately without relying on the then-in-progress…

  web accessibility · DHTML · AJAX · JavaScript · keyboard accessibility

• Making Multimedia Content Accessible for Screen Reader Users

  Hisashi Miyashita, Daisuke Sato, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper from IBM Research Tokyo describes an accessible multimedia browser designed to address three critical barriers blind users face with web multimedia content. The first problem is audio conflict: when media plays on a page, its sound masks the screen reader's speech…

  multimedia accessibility · screen readers · blind users · audio description · video accessibility

• The HearSay Non-Visual Web Browser

  Yevgen Borodin, Jalal Mahmud, I. V. Ramakrishnan, Amanda Stent · 2007 · Proceedings of the 2007 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents the original HearSay non-visual web browser (version 1/2), developed at Stony Brook University in collaboration with the Helen Keller Services for the Blind. HearSay is a free, open-source, cross-platform browser written in Java that uses Mozilla for web…

  non-visual web browser · screen readers · blind users · web accessibility · natural language processing

• WebAnywhere: A Screen Reader On-the-Go

  Jeffrey P. Bigham, Craig M. Prince · 2007 · Assets '07: Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This demonstration paper introduces WebAnywhere, a web-based, self-voicing screen reader that enables blind users to access the web from any computer with a standard browser and sound output, without needing to install specialized software. The paper addresses a fundamental…

  screen readers · web accessibility · blind users · assistive technology · text-to-speech

• Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) for Communication and Control

  Jonathan R. Wolpaw · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This keynote paper from Jonathan Wolpaw at the Wadsworth Center (New York State Department of Health) provides an overview of brain-computer interface (BCI) research aimed at developing augmentative communication and control technology for people with severe neuromuscular…

  brain-computer interface · augmentative communication · neuromuscular disorders · ALS · EEG

• A Novel Wayfinding System Based on Geo-coded QR Codes for Individuals with Cognitive Impairments

  Yao-Jen Chang, Shih-Kai Tsai, Yao-Sheng Chang, Tsen-Yung Wang · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper presents a wayfinding prototype system that uses geo-coded QR codes placed at decision points along routes to provide just-in-time navigation directions to people with cognitive impairments. Developed by researchers at Chung Yuan Christian University, National Chiao…

  cognitive impairment · wayfinding · QR code · navigation · ubiquitous computing

• Humming Control Interface for Hand-held Devices

  Sook Young Won, Dong-In Lee, Julius Smith · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from Stanford University presents a control-by-humming interface that allows hands-free operation of portable devices such as cell phones and music players through subvocal humming detected by a Bluetooth-connected insertion earphone/microphone. The system converts…

  alternative input · hands-free control · subvocal input · pitch detection · motor impairment

• Adoption and Configuration of Assistive Technologies: A Semiotic Engineering Perspective

  Katherine Deibel · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from the University of Washington proposes applying semiotic engineering — an HCI design methodology rooted in semiotics (the study of signs, symbols, and their meanings) — to address the high abandonment rate of assistive technologies. Studies show that approximately…

  assistive technology · technology adoption · semiotic engineering · technology discontinuance · reading disabilities

• Observing Sara: A Case Study of a Blind Person's Interactions with Technology

  Kristen Shinohara, Josh Tenenberg · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This paper from the University of Washington, Tacoma presents a rich, in-depth case study of Sara, a congenitally blind college student, observed and interviewed across multiple sessions as she interacts with a wide range of technologies in her home. The study uses Blythe, Monk…

  blindness · assistive technology · case study · technology biographies · workarounds

• Automatic accessibility transcoding for flash content

  Daisuke Sato, Hisashi Miyashita, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa · 2007 · Proceedings of the 9th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '07)

  This 2007 paper from IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory tackles a problem that was acute during the height of the Flash era: the near-total inaccessibility of Flash content to screen reader users. Although Flash had an accessibility framework built on Microsoft Active Accessibility…

  flash · transcoding · automatic repair · screen readers · alternative text