Xinru Tang

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

My research explores how to design and build human-first AI with affected communities and domain professionals, with a particular focus on disability. My work spans across the full AI development pipeline from user experience understanding, to task conceptualization, dataset annotation, and model evaluation. Building on my ongoing work, I proposed Cripping AI as a guiding framework towards truly disability-centered AI.

I enjoy drawing insights from across disciplines to shape my ideas, such as critical disability studies, first-person experiences, and linguistics. Additionally, I have a broad interest in socio-technical and political complexities involved in human-centered design. 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. My research has been recognized with two Honorable Mention Awards and two Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) recognitions at ACM CHI and CSCW.

Selected Publications

Rethinking AI Development Through Lived Disability Experience

Cripping AI: Reimagining AI Through Lived Disability Experiences
Xinru Tang, Ting-an Lin, Jingjin Li and Shaomei Wu
@FAccT2026 [PDF] [ACM] [slides]

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 AI 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 Accessibility & Inclusive 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 Piper
@DIS2026 [PDF] [ACM]