Designing Accessible Interactions with Emerging Technology
We are a Human-Computer Interaction research lab in the Department of Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology, directed by Dr. Jonggi Hong. Our mission is to design and evaluate accessible interactions with emerging technologies, from wearables and smart glasses to AI-infused applications, so that the people who are too often designed for last become the people we design for first.
We explore how people interact with technology and how technology can be designed to better support, engage, and empower them. Our research spans human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, and interactive systems design, with applications ranging from accessibility to education, productivity, and creative expression. Current projects include a smart-glasses assistant that guides blind users through paper forms, intelligent real-time editing that makes slide presentations accessible as they happen, LLM-powered visual assistance with goal-directed filters, and block-based visual tools that make expert domains such as law programmable.
Accessibility is the core driver of our work. Camera-based AI can describe the world, but its errors are hard to detect without sight. We study how blind and low-vision users perceive, verify, and recover from mistakes made by speech recognition, object recognition, and conversational agents, and we build interfaces that put users in control of what the AI does for them. If we build a system for blind users, blind users test it.
We take a user-centered, interdisciplinary approach, combining methods from design, engineering, and the social sciences to create systems that are both technically robust and meaningfully useful. We collaborate closely with end users, industry partners, and researchers at other institutions to ensure our innovations address real-world needs and have lasting impact. Our results appear at the leading venues in accessibility and HCI, including ASSETS, UIST, CHI, and DIS.
Explore our projects below, and get in touch if you are interested in working with us or participating in a study.
Jun 2026: Enhancing Slide Presentation Accessibility for Blind and Low-Vision Audiences Through Delay-Buffered Editing (Azizul Haque, Jonggi Hong) receives a Best Paper Honorable Mention at DIS 2026!
Sep 2026: Our poster ASPIRE: Accessible Slide Presentation via Intelligent Real-time Editing (Azizul Haque, Jonggi Hong) is accepted to ASSETS 2026! See you in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, October 25–28.
Jun 2026: Two ICL papers are presented at DIS 2026: CatalaBlocks, led by undergraduates Nicholas Russo, Matthew Schmitt, and Ananya Iyer, and Enhancing Slide Presentation Accessibility for Blind and Low-Vision Audiences Through Delay-Buffered Editing by Azizul Haque.
Feb 2026: Jiayin Huang and Dawei Xu's study of emotional preferences for chatbot support is accepted to AHFE 2026.
Oct 2025: The lab presents two full papers at ASSETS 2025 in Denver: an interactive form-filling assistant on smart glasses (Rifat Rahman Khan, Srikala Sandu) and accessible slide presentations via intelligent real-time editing (Azizul Hoque).
Sep 2025: Typing Haptically, a collaboration with KAIST on non-auditory text entry for blind and low-vision users, appears at UIST 2025. CustomSight, with the University of Virginia, is presented in the UIST adjunct track.
Aug 2025: Jiayin Huang presents work on how users validate conversational-agent responses at IHIET 2025.
Oct 2024: Dr. Hong serves as Workshop Chair of ASSETS 2024 and presents Understanding How Blind Users Handle Object Recognition Errors.
May 2024: Enhancing Walk-Light Detector Usage for the Visually Impaired is a Best Paper Nominee at W4A 2024.
Sep 2023: Stevens News profiles Dr. Hong's research in Understanding and Empowering Disabled Tech Users.
Jan 2023: Dr. Jonggi Hong joins Stevens Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and founds the Interactive Computing Lab.
We publish our research in the leading human-computer interaction and accessibility venues, including ASSETS, UIST, CHI, and DIS. Four of our articles have been honored with best paper awards or nominations.
An introduction to human-computer interaction: basic concepts, principles, and frameworks in HCI; models of interaction; and design guidelines and methodologies. Students learn how to study users, prototype interactive systems, and evaluate them with real people, and they work in teams on a semester-long project that culminates in an original contribution to the field. Accessibility and inclusive design run through the whole course.
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A graduate-level introduction to artificial intelligence that emphasizes both learning and problem solving. The course develops rigorous statistical models for real-world AI applications and covers modern optimization techniques for finding an optimal model for a given problem, with attention to how people interact with, trust, and correct AI systems.
Read more →Conference talk from ACM DIS 2026. A short, deliberate delay lets an intelligent editing pipeline describe and structure slides before blind and low-vision viewers hear them, making recorded presentations accessible without a human editor.
Read more →Prospective PhD students: We are looking for motivated PhD students interested in human-computer interaction, accessibility, and human-AI interaction, in particular (1) accessible AI and visual assistance for blind and low-vision people and (2) wearable and non-visual interaction with smart glasses and haptics. Please see our research focus. If you believe you are the right fit, apply to the Stevens Computer Science PhD program, name Dr. Hong in your statement, and email him at jhong8@stevens.edu with: (1) a brief description of yourself and your skillset, supported by relevant prior experience, (2) some examples of projects you'd like to pursue in your PhD, and (3) your CV. We look forward to hearing from you!
Undergraduates/Masters students: Current Stevens students can join the lab for an independent study, a thesis, a senior design project, or a research assistantship when funding is available. Many of our recent papers are led by master's and undergraduate students. Please email Dr. Hong with your year, program, relevant coursework, and the research area that interests you, using the subject line "[Student Research] Your Name".
Study participants: Our research depends on people who use assistive technology every day. We regularly run studies with blind and low-vision participants, in person in Hoboken, NJ and remotely, and participants are compensated for their time. If you would like to hear about upcoming studies, email Dr. Hong with "Study participation" in the subject line.
Contact: Dr. Jonggi Hong, Gateway Center S252, Stevens Institute of Technology, 1 Castle Point Terrace, Hoboken, NJ 07030. jhong8@stevens.edu · LinkedIn
