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 research work addressed in the paper "Methodology for heuristic evaluation of the accessibility of statistical charts for people with low vision and color vision deficiency," published by Rubén Alcaraz Martínez , Mireia Ribera , Toni Granollers Saltiveri (2021), focuses on formulating a set of heuristics to assess statistical chart's usability while concentrating on the requirements of those with low vision (LV) and color vision deficiency (CVD). To do this, the authors created a set of heuristics based on the methodology defined by Quiñones et al.  in the paper "A methodology to develop usability/user experience heuristics". The authors conducted two evaluations after establishing the first version of the set of heuristics (17 indicators). Following the assessments, the authors expanded the list to 18 indicators, and other changes were made, including a more straightforward scoring system and additional documentation for evaluators. This study was the fi...