Xinru Tang

a Chinese female with glasses, long hair, and a green T-shirt
CV

Ph.D. Candidate at UCI
Pronoun: She/Her

Contact: xinrut1@uci.edu

Research Interests: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Accessibility

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Publications

About

I am a Ph.D. candidate at Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine. I am advised by Dr. Anne Marie Piper as a member of Accessibility Research Collective. Outside school, I volunteer with to co-develop more accessible language and communication technologies with and for people who stutter.

Research Interests

I am broadly interested in how to design for the diversity and complexity of human experiences. My current work approaches this broad area in the context of disability with two main threads: (1) critically examining existing design paradigms against lived disability experiences and knowledge; (2) developing disability-centric deisgn practices with affected communities and domain professionals. I also have a broad interest in socio-technical and political complexities involved in design.

My interest in human diversity origins from my work with people across disabilities, ages, languages, and cultures. I enjoy drawing insights from across disciplines to shape my ideas, particularly from critical scholarship, first-person experiences, and human-centered areas such as linguistics. I have published and co-authored work in top-tier human-centered computing venues such as ACM CHI, CSCW, FAccT, DIS, and IEEE S&P.

Selected Publications

Rethinking Tech Design Through Lived Disability Experience

Cripping AI: Reimagining AI Through Lived Disability Experiences
Xinru Tang, Ting-an Lin, Jingjin Li and Shaomei Wu
To Appear@FAccT2026

Reimagining Sign Language Technologies: Analyzing Translation Work of Chinese Deaf Online Content Creators
Xinru Tang and Anne Marie Piper
@CHI2026 [slides]
*Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%)

Everyday Uncertainty: How Blind People Use GenAI Tools for Information Access
Xinru Tang, Ali Abdolrahmani, Darren Gergle and Anne Marie Piper
@CHI2025

Developing Disability-Centered Design Practices

Disability-First AI Dataset Annotation: Co-designing Stuttered Speech Annotation Guidelines with People Who Stutter
Xinru Tang, Jingjin Li and Shaomei Wu
@CHI2026 [slides]

"It's trained by non-disabled people": Evaluating How Image Quality Affects Product Captioning with VLMs
Kapil Garg, Xinru Tang, Jimin Heo, Dwayne R Morgan, Darren Gergle, Erik B Sudderth and Anne Marie Piper
@CHI2026
*Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%)

Critical Perspectives on Inclusive & Accessible Design

Beyond "Vulnerable Populations'': A Unified Understanding of Vulnerability From A Socio-Ecological Perspective
Xinru Tang, Gabriel Lima, Li Jiang, Lucy Simko and Yixin Zou
@CSCW2025
*Recognition for Contribution to Diversity and Inclusion

Access in the Shadow of Ableism: An Autoethnography of a Blind Student's Higher Education Experience in China
Weijun Zhang* and Xinru Tang*
@CHI2026

Designing for Collective Access: In Search of a Solution to Accessible Communication in a Mixed-Ability Non-Profit
Xinru Tang and Anne Marie Piper
To Appear@DIS2026