We surveyed 70 mobile app creators (34 professionals and 36 students learning mobile app creation) to understand their perceptions toward creativity and accessibility.We found mobile app creators who treated design constraints as creative constraints naturally included accessibility, but those with the freedom of unrestricted aesthetic design often disregarded accessibility.Our research suggests that we can change negative perceptions toward accessible design by making it an integrated part of the creative process.

A current trend in mobile user interface design is to provide alternative color modes (ACMs), such as light mode, dark mode, and high contrast mode, to improve people’s interaction experiences according to their vision access needs and/or the environment. For example, high contrast mode can improve UI visibility for people with low vision and for people using their smartphones in bright sunlight. However, little is known about the experiences of people using ACMs. To address this, we interviewed 29 people with and without vision impairments to discuss the benefits and challenges of ACMs. We found that while ACMs are beneficial, the current implementation results in accessibility and usability issues, particularly for people with vision impairments (e.g., negative health consequences and affected work performance). Using our findings, we outline steps the HCI community should consider to address current limitations and improve future ACMs.

Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) users face accessibility challenges during in-person and remote meetings. While emerging use of applications incorporating automatic speech recognition (ASR) is promising, more user-interface and user-experience research is needed. While co-design methods could elucidate designs for such applications, COVID-19 has interrupted in-person research. This study describes a novel methodology for conducting online co-design workshops with 18 DHH and hearing participant pairs to investigate ASR-supported mobile and videoconferencing technologies along two design dimensions: Correcting errors in ASR output and implementing notification systems for influencing speaker behaviors. Our methodological findings include an analysis of communication modalities and strategies participants used, use of an online collaborative whiteboarding tool, and how participants reconciled differences in ideas. Finally, we present guidelines for researchers interested in online DHH co-design methodologies, enabling greater geographically diversity among study participants even beyond the current pandemic.

Digital designers often do not make their work accessible (e.g., websites failing criteria set by the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), and accessible design research discusses many solutions to address this problem (e.g., teaching accessibility within university design and technical courses). However, prior research in this area typically does not acknowledge whether recommendations and resources to support accessible design are suitable for all digital designers due to different training pathways and job support structures (e.g., large-company vs. rural and self-employed designers or designers who learned their skills outside of formal education settings). We interviewed 20 digital designers from rural and urban areas, as well as working from home and remotely, to understand the challenges they experience in making accessible content within the context of their workplace. We find that job support structures mediate the effectiveness of current accessible design recommendations and resources, and we suggest how to improve accessible design support to meet the needs of under-resourced designers.

Reliable and accessible authentication techniques are required to maintain privacy and security. This is paramount as technology plays an increasing role in our lives. In this paper, we examine the previous work on accessible authentication techniques for blind/low vision people, deaf/hard-of-hearing people, people with cognitive impairments, and people with motor impairments. We seek to identify gaps in the current research to advocate where future efforts are needed to create authentication techniques that will work for everyone. We found a lot of variability in prior work investigating the accessibility of authentication techniques, including shortfalls and gaps in the literature. We make recommendations on the directions future research should take.