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 and am part of Accessibility Research Collective. I was also fourtunate to work with Dr. Yixin Zou in her Human-Centered Security and Privacy group at Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP).

Research Interests

My current research investigates how to embed disabled experiences and knowledge 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. I also have a broad interest in the 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 Piper
To 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 Wu
To 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 Piper
To Appear@CHI2026

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]