Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

  Figure 1: A virtual slide from Old Dominion University's GAAD 2025 event highlights "Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)" during a hybrid session on inclusive design. Celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) , Old Dominion University Libraries successfully hosted " Accessible by Design: Creating Inclusive PDFs Using Adobe Acrobat" in collaboration with the recently established Employees with Disabilities Association ( EWDA ). Led by Dr. Brett Cook-Snell , this hybrid workshop brought together faculty, staff, and students both in person at Perry Library Room 1306 and online via Zoom for a thorough investigation of digital accessibility that went far beyond technical training to address fundamental questions about inclusion, ableism, and universal design. I attended the session virtually via Zoom, and in this blog post, I will share my firsthand experience and reflections. Since its launch in 2021 (Figure 2), when the first event was planne...

  The 26th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2024) was held from November 4 to 8 in San José, Costa Rica. This premier international forum brought together researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of multimodal artificial intelligence and social interaction. The conference focused on advancing methods and systems that integrate multiple input and output modalities, and explored both technical challenges and real-world applications. In this blog post, I share my experience attending the conference in person, the engaging discussions I took part in, and key takeaways from the sessions, presentations, and interactions throughout the week. Our full paper, " Improving Usability of Data Charts in Multimodal Documents for Low Vision Users, " was presented on Day 3, Thursday, 7 November 2024, during the 16:30 to 18:00 session in poster format. ICMI 2024 followed a single-track format that included keynote talks, full and short paper pre...

  The ACM Web4All Conference (W4A) is the premier venue for research focused on web accessibility. It brings together a diverse community committed to making the web inclusive for users of all abilities and backgrounds. This year, the 22nd International Web for All Conference (W4A 2025) was held at the ICC Sydney: International Convention & Exhibition Centre in Sydney, Australia, from April 28–29, 2025. In this blog post, I highlight my work titled “ AccessMenu: Enhancing Usability of Online Restaurant Menus for Screen Reader Users ,” which addresses the accessibility challenges faced by blind and visually impaired (BVI) users when navigating image-based restaurant menus online. Figure 1 Venkatraman et al.: (A) A sample restaurant menu in its original visual form. (B) The output produced by JAWS Convenient OCR when applied to the menu. (C) The AccessMenu interface, where the red box highlights the natural language query field, the yellow box marks the voice-input button, and...

  The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) serves as the leading global platform for showcasing innovative research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It convenes researchers, practitioners, and industry leaders to discuss cutting-edge advancements in designing, evaluating, and utilizing technology to improve human experiences. CHI 2024 , themed "Surfing the World," took place from May 11 to 16, 2024, at the Hawaiʻi Convention Center in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, USA, with provisions for remote participation.  In this blog post, I highlight a compelling recent work presented at the conference, titled " GazePrompt: Enhancing Low Vision People’s Reading Experience with Gaze-Aware Augmentations ," authored by Ru Wang et al . Figure 1 Wang et al. : GazePrompt offers two primary features: Line-Switching (LS) support and Difficult-Word (DW) support. Each feature includes two design options: (a) Line Highlighting and (b) Arrow for LS support, and (c) Text-...