Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

Figure 1: (a) Difficulties in understanding posts due to missing or assumed context, (b) need for standardization of posts (Figure 1  in  M.J. Ferdous et al.). Introduction Social media sites such as Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube play a central role in how people exchange ideas, debate current issues, and build communities, with threaded discussions serving as a key mechanism for interaction across these platforms. These platforms are designed around visual structures: nested replies, indentation, spacing, and visual grouping allow sighted users to quickly scan conversations, identify relationships between posts, and decide where to engage. For blind users who rely on screen readers, accessing these conversations involves a fundamentally different interaction model. As shown in the accompanying video, screen readers present content linearly, reading one element at a time while the user moves through posts and interface elements using keyboard commands such as Tab and Shift+Tab...

Figure 1: A sample prompt used in generating persona using ChatGPT (Figure 1 in   Park et al. ) Introduction: The Unseen Biases of Our AI Companions Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have become ubiquitous in our lives. We rely on them as impartial conveyors of facts for everything ranging from composing emails to solving complex queries. However, if we put these AIs in the hot seat and question them about identity, which is a very human thing, what would be the outcome? What if we ask them about autism? In the recent study “ ‘As an Autistic Person Myself:’ The Bias Paradox Around Autism in LLMs ” ( CHI 25 ), Park et al . went deep to understand what ChatGPT thinks about the condition of being autistic. The results they got weren’t just a malfunction of the system; rather, they were an indication of the way people behave towards the issue of neurodiversity,  going back and forth between one extreme and the other. The artificial mind is going through the so-called " ...

  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...

Figure 1:  An example of a Coyote ad on social media in Spanish. (Figure 1 in  Kodandaram et al. )   Introduction Social media has revolutionized how information flows, connecting people across the globe at an unprecedented scale. However, this same connectivity has made these platforms fertile ground for illicit activities, including human smuggling. This issue, though not immediately visible to most people, poses a severe humanitarian crisis. We explore in our paper published at the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media 2024 titled " Unveiling Coyote Ads: Detecting Human Smuggling Advertisements on Social Media, " how traffickers exploit these platforms to lure vulnerable individuals, particularly those seeking better opportunities or fleeing dangerous situations. The study focuses on identifying and analyzing “ coyote ads, ” which are advertisements posted by human smugglers. Our goal was clear: to develop an effective detection mechanism that exposes thes...