Xinru Tang
CV
Ph.D. Candidate at UCI
Pronoun: She/Her
Contact: xinrut1@uci.edu
Research Interests: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Accessibility
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 AImpower.org 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 of human experiences, with my current work exploring this topic in the context of disabiity. Centered around this goal, my work (1) critically examines existing design paradigms against lived disability experiences and knowledge; (2) develops 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 WuTo Appear@FAccT2026 [PDF]
Reimagining Sign Language Technologies: Analyzing Translation Work of Chinese Deaf Online Content Creators
Xinru Tang and Anne Marie Piper@CHI2026
[PDF]
[ACM]
[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
[PDF]
[ACM]
[slides]
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
[PDF]
[ACM]
[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 [PDF] [ACM] *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 [PDF] [ACM] [slides] [blog] *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 [PDF] [ACM]
Designing for Collective Access: In Search of a Solution to Accessible Communication in a Mixed-Ability Non-Profit Xinru Tang and Anne Marie PiperTo Appear@DIS2026 [PDF]