Xinru Tang
CV
Ph.D. Candidate at UCI
Pronoun: She/Her
Contact: xinrut1@uci.edu
Research Interests: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Accessibility, Human-Centered AI
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 current research investigates how to embed disabled experiences, knowledge, and needs across the AI pipeline to develop disability-centered AI systems. Toward this goal, my work (1) critically examines AI models, systems, and design paradigms against lived disabled experiences; (2) develops disability-centric AI practices with affected communities and domain professionals, such as dataset annotations and model evaluations. I also have a broad interest in socio-technical and political complexities involved in design.
My interest in the diversity of human bodyminds 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 on disability and other human-centered topics such as linguistics. I have published and co-authored work in top-tier human-centered computing venues such as CHI, CSCW, and IEEE S&P.Selected Publications
Rethinking AI Design & Development Against Lived Disabled Experiences
Reimagining Sign Language Technologies: Analyzing Translation Work of Chinese Deaf Online Content Creators Xinru Tang and Anne Marie PiperTo Appear@CHI2026 [preprint]
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 WuTo Appear@CHI2026 [preprint]
"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 PiperTo Appear@CHI2026 [preprint]
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*To Appear@CHI2026 [preprint]