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• When Headers Are Not There: Design and User Evaluation of an Automatic Topicalisation and Labelling Tool to Aid the Exploration of Web Documents by Blind Users

  Jorge Sassaki Resende Silva, André Pimenta Freire, Paula Christina Figueira Cardoso · 2022 · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2022)

  This paper addresses a fundamental problem for blind screen reader users: what happens when web documents lack proper heading markup, eliminating one of the primary navigation strategies available to them. The researchers designed and evaluated a tool that uses Natural Language…

  screen readers · headings · natural language processing · text segmentation · blind users

• Understanding the Touchscreen-based Nonvisual Target Acquisition Task Performance of Screen Reader Users

  Hwayeon Joh, Yun Jung Lee, Uran Oh · 2022 · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A 2022)

  This study investigates how screen reader users find and select targets on a smartphone touchscreen without visual cues, examining the effects of screen size, target size, and the ratio between them. Twelve participants with visual impairments (three totally blind, three with…

  touchscreen · screen readers · target acquisition · mobile accessibility · visual impairment

• Framework for Experiential Transcoding of Web Pages with Scanpath Trend Analysis

  Idil Ece Trabzon, Furkan Yagiz, Elmas Eda Karadavut, Mahmoud Elhewahey, Sukru Eraslan, Yeliz Yesilada, Simon Harper · 2022 · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents EXTRA, an automated framework for experiential transcoding of web pages — a technique that restructures web content based on how sighted users actually interact with pages, rather than relying solely on source code analysis. The core problem the authors…

  screen readers · web transcoding · eye tracking · web page segmentation · content reordering

• Sounds and (Braille) Cells: Co-Designing Music Technology with Blind and Visually Impaired Musicians

  William Payne · 2022 · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This doctoral consortium paper outlines a three-phase dissertation addressing the accessibility barriers that blind and visually impaired (BVI) musicians face when using music creation technologies. Music software has democratized composition, production, and songwriting for…

  visual impairment · blindness · music technology · braille music · co-design

• IMAGE: A Deployment Framework for Creating Multimodal Experiences of Web Graphics

  Juliette Regimbal, Jeffrey R. Blum, Jeremy R. Cooperstock · 2022 · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This short paper from McGill University introduces IMAGE (Internet Multimodal Access to Graphical Exploration), an open-source framework for converting web graphics into accessible multimodal outputs including audio, haptic, and text representations for blind and low vision…

  multimodal · web graphics · image accessibility · haptic feedback · sonification

• 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

• Accessible Blockly: An Accessible Block-Based Programming Library for People with Visual Impairments

  Aboubakar Mountapmbeme, Obianuju Okafor, Stephanie Ludi · 2022 · Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS)

  This paper presents Accessible Blockly, a prototype library that augments Google's Blockly — the open-source library underlying most mainstream block-based programming environments (Scratch, MakeCode, AppInventor) — with keyboard and screen reader interaction capabilities.…

  block-based programming · screen readers · keyboard navigation · blind programmers · computer science education

• Evaluating Haptic Technology in Accessibility of Digital Audio Workstations for Visual Impaired Creatives

  Christina Karpodini · 2022 · Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22)

  This doctoral consortium paper proposes a two-stage research programme to make Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) more accessible for musicians with visual impairments through haptic feedback. The author argues that modern music production has become an increasingly visual…

  haptic technology · visual impairment · music accessibility · digital audio workstation · vibrotactile feedback

• Accessible PDFs: Applying Artificial Intelligence for Automated Remediation of STEM PDFs

  Felix M. Schmitt-Koopmann, Elaine M. Huang, Alireza Darvishy · 2022 · Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2022)

  This Ph.D. research paper presents a plan to leverage artificial intelligence to automate the remediation of PDF documents from STEM fields, addressing one of the most significant barriers to information access for people with visual impairments. The Portable Document Format…

  PDF accessibility · document remediation · artificial intelligence · STEM accessibility · mathematical formulae

• Performing Qualitative Data Analysis as a Blind Researcher: Challenges, Workarounds and Design Recommendations

  O. Aishwarya · 2022 · Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22)

  This short paper provides a first-person account from a blind early-career researcher about the significant accessibility barriers encountered when trying to perform qualitative data analysis (QDA). The author, based at IIIT Bangalore, situates the work within the broader shift…

  blindness · screen readers · qualitative research · research accessibility · academic accessibility

• CodeWalk: Facilitating Shared Awareness in Mixed-Ability Collaborative Software Development

  Venkatesh Potluri, Maulishree Pandey, Andrew Begel, Michael Barnett, Scott Reitherman · 2022 · Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22)

  This paper presents CodeWalk, a set of accessibility features added to Microsoft's Live Share extension for Visual Studio Code, designed to make remote synchronous code collaboration accessible to blind or visually impaired (BVI) developers. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated…

  blind developers · collaborative programming · IDE accessibility · screen readers · workspace awareness

• SoundCells: Designing a Browser-Based Music Technology for Braille and Print Notation

  William Payne, Fabiha Ahmed, Michael Gardell, R. Luke DuBois, Amy Hurst · 2022 · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper from New York University presents SoundCells, a free, open-source, browser-based music notation tool designed to be accessible to screen reader users while outputting music in three formats simultaneously: audio playback, visual print scores, and braille music…

  music accessibility · blindness · visual impairment · braille · screen readers

• AIDE: An Automatic Image Description Engine for Review Imagery

  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 Wayfair presents AIDE, a multimodal machine learning system that automatically generates contextual alt-text for user-submitted review images in e-commerce — a category of imagery that is particularly inaccessible because it is user-generated, unpredictable in…

  alt text · computer vision · blindness · visual impairment · screen readers

• Contextual Exploration of Mathematical Formulae on the Web for People with Visual Disabilities in Brazil with an Open-Source Screen Reader

  Hérlon Manollo Cândido Guedes, Paula C. F. Cardoso, William Massami Watanabe, André Pimenta Freire · 2022 · Proceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC)

  This paper presents the implementation and evaluation of Access8Math-NavMatBR, an NVDA screen reader add-on for reading and exploring mathematical formulae on the web in Brazilian Portuguese. The add-on implements contextual exploration — a strategy where formulae are…

  mathematical accessibility · screen readers · NVDA · MathML · visual disability

• What's in an ALT Tag? Exploring Caption Content Priorities through Collaborative Captioning

  Annika Muehlbradt, Shaun K. Kane · 2022 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper investigates what makes a good image caption through a novel collaborative captioning methodology. Six pairs of blind and sighted partners—including married couples, friends, and roommates—worked together to create and refine captions for 15 social media photographs…

  image descriptions · alt text · collaborative accessibility · cross-ability collaboration · screen readers

• "Every Website Is a Puzzle!": Facilitating Access to Common Website Features for People with Visual Impairments

  Natã M. Barbosa, Jordan Hayes, Smirity Kaushik, Yang Wang · 2022 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper addresses a fundamental challenge for screen reader users: while sighted users can rely on visual conventions to find common website features (log in at top right, contact at bottom), these shortcuts are inaccessible to users with visual impairments who must linearly…

  visual impairment · screen readers · web accessibility · machine learning · crowdsourcing

• Development and Evaluation of a Tool for Assisting Content Creators in Making PDF Files More Accessible

  Debashish Pradhan, Tripti Rajput, Aravind Jembu Rajkumar, Jonathan Lazar, Rajiv Jain, Vlad I. Morariu, Varun Manjunatha · 2022 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents the development and evaluation of "Ally," a web-based tool designed to help content creators remediate PDF documents for accessibility. While trillions of PDF documents exist online, only a small fraction include the metadata necessary for assistive…

  PDF accessibility · document remediation · content tagging · reading order · accessible tables

• Addressing Accessibility Barriers in Programming for People with Visual Impairments: A Literature Review

  Aboubakar Mountapmbeme, Obianuju Okafor, Stephanie Ludi · 2022 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This systematic literature review analyzes 70 papers published between 2000-2020 examining accessibility barriers in programming for people with visual impairments and proposed solutions. The review covers both professional programmers and students learning to code, spanning…

  visual impairment · blindness · programming · IDE accessibility · screen readers

• Diffscriber: Describing Visual Design Changes to Support Mixed-Ability Collaborative Presentation Authoring

  Yi-Hao Peng, Jason Wu, Jeffrey Bigham, Amy Pavel · 2022 · Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST)

  This paper presents Diffscriber, a system that identifies and describes visual design changes made to slide presentations, enabling blind and visually impaired (BVI) presenters to meaningfully participate in collaborative slide authoring with sighted collaborators. The research…

  blind and low vision · mixed-ability collaboration · presentation accessibility · authoring tools · screen readers

19 results.