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 research aims to bring lived human experiences into the AI lifecycle to make sure the resulting systems truly serve humanity and people can trust. Much of my work has focused on disabled populations, in which I position disability as a powerful lens for revealing (1) the flawed assumptions embedded in AI development about humans (e.g., how humans perceive, communicate, and work); (2) the systemic forces that re-produce digital harms and inequality.
Across Sign Language AI, Visual AI, and Speech AI, I use mixed methods, asking how disability knowledge can reshape AI from the beginning, including:
- Defining problems, e.g., how should we approach machine translation when even expert translators struggle to translate [1]?
- Representing data, e.g., how to represent speech when human perception of speech is not universal [2]?
- Designing and evaluating systems, e.g., how to evaluate and benchmark a visual AI system for blind people when sighted knowledge is inherently subjective [3, 4]?
I connect the insights I learned into Cripping AI, a framework for rethinking AI through lived disability experiences.
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]