Autistic people often have an interest in and spend a substantial amount of time engaged with video games. Games can be supportive of their mental health and social needs and have been widely used for behavioral interventions among autistic people. However, the gaming experiences and preferences of autistic people themselves have not been thoroughly studied. To explore these experiences, we used a multi-method approach, analyzing game-related posts from a large autism-related subreddit and conducting a survey with 145 autistic people. The survey allowed us to further understand preferences around accessibility and sensory experiences, representation, and social experiences in communities that emerged in the Reddit posts. We found that games offering a sense of freedom, control, and creativity might be particularly appealing to autistic gamers. Discussions also emerged around what types of audio and visual sensory input were considered soothing and appropriate. Moreover, both the Reddit posts and survey responses highlighted the importance of accommodating diverse social preferences and providing accurate autistic representation. Overall, our findings offer insights into the gaming experiences and preferences of autistic gamers, emphasizing the need for greater inclusion, accessibility, and supportive gaming communities.

Audio description (AD) narrates important visual details which are played during dialogue gaps in video soundtracks, making them accessible to blind and low vision (BLV) audiences. AD professionals (producers, writers, narrators, mixers, and quality control specialists) possess expert knowledge of AD development and the constraints that affect their work. However, their perspectives remain largely absent in AD research. We present interviews with 17 AD professionals (8 BLV), detailing their workflows to produce AD for recorded media and live theater. We additionally explore their perspectives on recent changes impacting their work, revealing tensions between advocacy for culturally competent AD and the rise of automations—some beneficial, others with concerning implications for AD quality. Highlighting these tensions, we offer research directions to support AD professionals, and we pose guiding questions for AD and AI innovators on preserving the high-quality human touch professionals consider fundamental to the accessibility provision.

Creating accessible Virtual Reality (VR) is an ongoing concern in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research community. However, there is little reflection on how accessibility should be conceptualized in the context of an experiential technology. We address this gap in our work: We first explore how accessibility is currently defined, highlighting a growing recognition of the importance of equitable and enriching experiences. We then carry out a literature study ( N = 28) to examine how accessibility and its relationship with experience is currently conceptualized in VR research. Our results show that existing work seldom defines accessibility in the context of VR and that barrier-centric research is prevalent. Likewise, we show that experience—e.g., that of presence or immersion—is rarely designed for or evaluated, while participant feedback suggests that it is relevant for disabled users of VR. On this basis, we contribute a working definition of VR accessibility that considers experience a necessary condition for equitable access, and discuss the need for future work to focus on experience in the same way as VR research addressing non-disabled persons does.

Previous studies indicate that people with intellectual disability are interested in information about their daily life experiences. However, their information behaviour has not been examined in relation to their executive function. In this article, we characterize the participants’ health information interests, preferred sources, and search experiences, in relation to their executive function reported through shopping-related activities. A total of 39 participants, aged 19 to 59 years, who could verbally communicate their daily-life information-seeking experiences were included in the survey. Data was collected using an accessible survey delivered through structured interviews by a researcher familiar with the participants. The quantitative data was used for bar chart creation and cluster analysis. The k-means cluster analysis grouped participants into two distinct clusters; within each cluster, the participant characteristics concerning preferred health information sources, highest educational attainment, and independence in shopping-related functions (functional independence) were found to be homogeneous. Participants who were independent in all four shopping-related functions had vocational training and reported accessing health information from the Internet and chemists. The study highlights that digital independence is linked to the participants’ functional independence. This behaviour approach offers novel insights into user profiling, moving beyond traditional IQ-based models, which may guide inclusive technology solutions.

Examinations of intersectionality and identity dimensions in accessibility research have primarily considered disability separately from a person's race, ethnicity, and culture. Accessibility work often does not include considerations of race as a construct, or treats race as a shallow demographic variable, if race is mentioned at all, or tends to conflate its designation with other proxies. The lack of attention to race as a construct and its interaction with other factors in accessibility research presents an oversight in our field. By systematically eliminating whole areas of need and vital perspectives from the work we do, this omits critical areas and domains of research inquiry. Further, there has been little focus on the intersection of race and disability within accessibility research, and the relevance of their interplay. When research in race or disability does not mention the other, this work overlooks the potential to better understand the full nuance of marginalized, minoritized and “otherized” groups. To address this gap, our work highlights the value of considering how constructs of race and disability work alongside each other within accessibility research studies and the designs of socio-technical systems. We offer a framework for engaging the intersection of race and disability throughout the research process, and present a series of case studies that showcase the potential of integrating racial equity perspectives into accessibility research. Along with providing recommendations towards establishing this research direction and guiding principles for approaching this intersection, our new analysis reflects on tensions and considerations that arise while pursuing this work.

This article extends our 2023 ASSETS paper, “ A Large-Scale Mixed-Methods Analysis of Blind and Low-vision Research in ACM and IEEE, ” which provided a field-, technology-, and method-agnostic examination of blind and low-vision (BLV) research. Our mixed-methods approach combined quantitative bibliometric analyses with a qualitative analysis of the field, resulting in four high-level research areas. Building on this analysis, we further explore these areas by identifying and characterizing research themes and examining how the notion of interaction has been used in BLV research through an analysis of co-located terms. Our results highlight the rich diversity, overlap, and complementarity among these themes while highlighting potential areas for interdisciplinary collaboration. Moreover, our investigation into the terms co-located with interaction reveals a predominant focus on the modalities, technologies, and actions involved in interaction, rather than on the qualities of interaction. Our paper extends our previous findings by providing: (1) a finer-grained delineation within and between research areas; (2) a better understanding of the notion of interaction within BLV research; (3) an analysis of the research methods used when developing interactive computing systems for BLV users; and (4) a comparative analysis of prior systematic literature reviews of BLV research and possibilities for future survey contributions in our field.

Blind and low-vision (BLV) youth have been excluded from technology-mediated learning in school for two decades due to the systemic inaccessibility of K-12 instructional technologies. Accessibility guidelines that address BLV youth’s needs would help schools address this systemic inequity. But such guidelines do not yet exist nor does the robust knowledgebase required to write them. Herein, I report three key findings from a mixed methods user study of BLV youth’s lived experiences learning with access technologies (AT) and instructional technologies in US schools. First, these youth participants are using a broader range of AT than youth in previous studies. Second, the youth in this study frequently developed their AT literacy outside of school, and most did not begin developing AT literacy in earnest until they were teens. Third, the youth defined accessible instructional technologies as those that are (1) easy to learn to use and (2) easy to use to learn and they used an inquiry process to evaluate accessibility. Building on the findings, I offer six preliminary design guidelines for accessible instructional technologies. Finally, I urge other scholars to study BLV youth’s digital access needs so that standards setting bodies eventually have sufficient data to write youth accessibility guidelines.

Digital musical instruments (DMIs) offer the possibility to create barrier-free access to active music-making and to unique sound aesthetics for a broad group of people, including those who experience disabling barriers to access when using traditional acoustic musical instruments. However, current music education research focuses primarily on app-based DMIs. Although these devices have numerous advantages, such as ubiquitous availability and flexibility, they may be experienced as disabling by people with severe cognitive or complex disabilities. Thus, they only partially exploit the potential of DMIs for special educational needs (SEN) music practices, which we outline in this article. However, given that no comprehensive studies have yet been conducted on the use of DMIs in SEN schools, the actual motives and barriers for SEN school teachers to employ different types of DMIs in class are largely unknown. To address this research gap, we present the results of a quantitative survey covering all SEN schools in 12 of Germany's 16 federal states. We surveyed the status quo of DMI use in SEN schools and the perceived potential of DMIs and DMI-related information needs from the music teachers’ perspective. Our findings demonstrate that DMIs are only rarely used in Germany, with the exception of established standard DMIs such as keyboards and music apps. Unfortunately, accessible DMIs (ADMIs) are hardly used. Related to the rare use of DMIs in SEN schools, we also identified a lack of domain-specific knowledge among music teachers and concluded that there was a need to develop DMIs specifically designed for use in classroom education. Finally, we discuss the potential of using open-source DMI technology as well as the importance of identifying music teachers’ attitudes during DMI development.

Data visualization has become an increasingly important means of effective data communication and has played a vital role in broadcasting the progression of COVID-19. Accessible data representations, however, have lagged behind, leaving areas of information out of reach for many blind and visually impaired (BVI) users. In this work, we sought to understand (1) the accessibility of current implementations of visualizations on the web; (2) BVI users’ preferences and current experiences when accessing data-driven media; (3) how accessible data representations on the web address these users’ access needs and help them navigate, interpret, and gain insights from the data; and (4) the practical challenges that limit BVI users’ access and use of data representations. To answer these questions, we conducted a mixed-methods study consisting of an accessibility audit of 87 data visualizations on the web to identify accessibility issues, an online survey of 127 screen reader users to understand lived experiences and preferences, and a remote contextual inquiry with 12 of the survey respondents to observe how they navigate, interpret, and gain insights from accessible data representations. Our observations during this critical period of time provide an understanding of the widespread accessibility issues encountered across online data visualizations, the impact that data accessibility inequities have on the BVI community, the ways screen reader users sought access to data-driven information and made use of online visualizations to form insights, and the pressing need to make larger strides towards improving data literacy, building confidence, and enriching methods of access. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for researchers and practitioners to broaden data accessibility on the web.

Millions of people worldwide use smartphones every day, but the standard issue QWERTY keyboard is poorly optimized for non-sighted input. In this article, we document the variety of methods blind people use to enter text into their smartphones, and focus on one particular need: sending text messages. We analyze two modern corpora of text messages and contrast them with an older text message corpus, as well as other corpora gathered from news articles, chat rooms, and books. We present a virtual keyboard for blind people optimized for sending text messages called Ally. To evaluate Ally, we conducted two user studies with blind participants. Our first study found increasing speeds and our second study found that half of participants reached comparable speeds to QWERTY, suggesting it may be a viable replacement. We conclude with a discussion of future work for non-sighted text-entry of text messages.