AccessComputing News - November 2010: All Articles

Youth Slam is a popular summer event hosted by the National Federation of the Blind. At Youth Slam, high school students with visual impairments are engaged in challenging activities designed to build confidence and increase science literacy. At the 2007 and 2009 Youth Slam events, teams from the University of Washington offered instant messaging (IM) chatbots as a computer science track topic, funded by an AccessComputing minigrant. An IM chatbot is a program that can send and receive instant messages from a human. For example, a weather chatbot might answer questions like "What is the weather in Seattle today?"

The five-day chatbot workshop provided each student with a computer workstation and accessibility software. Programming activities were interspersed with other computer science activities as well as interviews with blind and low-vision role models in the computing field.

Five to seven instructors, most of whom were computer science students, facilitated the workshop. The instructors engaged the students—answering questions, teaching, and giving ideas for specific chatbots that the students might be interested in creating. Students who used screen readers employed headphones so as not to disturb the class when the computer spoke to them. On the final day, each student demonstrated their chatbot to the entire group. Students learned that programming can be hard work, but they left with a sense of accomplishment and pride in their chatbots.

Hi, I'm Jason. Currently, I am pursuing my bachelor of science degree in information technology, with a concentration in web and database integration at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). As a part of my degree, I am required to complete three internships. Since I have accepted a fourth internship, I expect to graduate in spring 2011.

My third internship is at Glenn Research Center (GRC-NASA). My work as an intern involves troubleshooting tough code bugs and creating custom scripts for GRC-NASA's website. Currently, I am developing a new web template that will allow individual departments to customize their websites. I am also responsible for ensuring that websites meet Section 508 accessibility requirements. If a website doesn't pass the requirement, then it's up to me to fix it. I enjoy working with server-side scripting and troubleshooting some of the toughest code bugs I've ever seen.

GRC-NASA should have been my last internship, however was offered an internship at IBM, and I accepted. I begin the assignment ten days after I complete my GRC-NASA internship. As an IBM intern, I will work as a pre-professional software engineer conducting maximum stress testing. I will be testing the product to ensure that if thousands of clients use the software simultaneously, the functionality of software and integrity of data operate as expected. If the software passes the test, it is ready for distribution.

Hi, my name is Seth Roy. When I was two years old, I was diagnosed with profound hearing loss in both of my ears. At present, I am a student at Marquette University (MU) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I am majoring in computational mathematics, which is a combination of mathematics, statistics, business, and computer science. My major is very similar to MU's actuarial science program. I'm interested in becoming an actuarial or risk analyst. After I earn my undergraduate degree, I would like to attend graduate school and earn an MBA. I find my studies to be very challenging, which keeps me motivated. The concepts that I'm learning right now fascinate me!

I love MU and its environment. Everyone respects me for who I am. MU didn't have much experience with Deaf or hard-of-hearing students before me. But when I became a student, they were very understanding and receptive to my needs and accommodations. I currently work part time in the Office of Disability Service (ODS), and I'm working to help to increase enrollment of students who are deaf and hard of hearing. I graduate in two years, and I am already thinking about how much I will miss this school. The staff truly care about the students' success.

This past summer, the premiere of two animation shorts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBpXy5qeBm0 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvjrEAxt-gM) developed by ten students graduating from the 2010 Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf & Hard of Hearing in Computing (Summer Academy) was attended by parents, instructors, and community members. It marked the successful completion of the fourth year of this innovative Summer Academy, bringing the total number of students that have completed the Academy to thirty-eight.

A typical student week during the Academy included animation, computer programming, and Academy Base (e.g., homeroom). One day a week was set aside for field trips to local software and hardware companies.

At the Academy, students learned basic concepts of animation, including lighting, movement, shading, and storyboarding during a certificate course in animation using Maya software. Two teams were formed, providing students valuable lessons in leadership and working together as team members.

Computing professionals who are deaf or hard of hearing met with academy students and talked about their educational and work experience, how they addressed accessibility issues, and the projects they currently work on. These presentations were followed by one-on-one mentoring sessions. Guest speakers included employees from Amazon, Cray Supercomputing, DeafCode, IBM, Microsoft, and National Technical Institute for the Deaf, among others.

Academy Base classes provided a regular time for students to engage with guest mentors, graduate student research presentations, student presentations on careers in computing, and demonstrations in current accessibility research. Graduate students gave presentations on customizing computer applications, programs that provide self-feedback in a variety of processes, privacy issues in designing social networking systems, power saving strategies for enabling video conversations on cell phones, multi-touch interaction for tabletop computing, and building a robot using neurobiological concepts.

Graduate and undergraduate students conducting research in the field of accessible technology presented on topics including MobileAccessibility, using smart phones to solve accessibility problems; ClassInFocus, a system for classroom accessibility for students who are deaf or hard of hearing; ASL-STEM Forum, a online dictionary of American Sign Language terms in computing; and MobileASL, a project that is working to make video conversations in ASL possible on cell phone networks. These presentations provided academy students with a peek into how university research programs are conducted by graduate students.

An important aspect of the Summer Academy is the ability to take students on field trips to the many industry software and hardware corporations that are headquartered or have a significant presence in Seattle. Some of these visits included the opportunity to meet employees who are deaf and hard of hearing at Cray, Google and Microsoft. Other companies visited included Adobe, Intel, and Valve.

Funders of the 2010 program include Johnson Scholarship Foundation, Oracle Corporation, Cray Supercomputers, Google, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, SignOn, Microsoft, Oracle, and Cray.

For more information on the academy, visit http://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/dhh/academy/

In October 2010, thousands of higher education IT professionals converged on Anaheim, California for the EDUCAUSE annual conference. The conference attracts a wide variety of college and university staff and faculty members who are involved in various capacities procuring, developing, maintaining, and using IT on their campuses. I have attended all but one of these conferences since 2002, in an effort to raise awareness of IT accessibility within this population.

In 2007, I founded and continue to chair the EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group, which now has 189 members representing approximately 140 unique institutions. For the 2010 conference, this group coordinated an IT Accessibility Center, which featured a "conference within a conference," focused entirely on IT accessibility.

The Center was staffed by accessibility specialists from seven institutions (UW-Seattle, University of Illinois, Stanford University, North Carolina State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Ohio State University, and California State University-Northridge). It included interactive demo stations where attendees could test assistive technologies, participate in accessibility simulations, or simply talk with Center staff about accessibility issues.

The Center also included a theater where twenty-two presentations, offered throughout the conference, covered a broad range of topics.

During the conference a series of six sessions were delivered by chief information officers (CIOs) and senior IT leaders, who shared their accessibility-related experiences, strategies, and lessons learned. These were the Center's best-attended sessions, and participating CIOs spoke earnestly of how highly they valued the opportunity to talk with colleagues on this important issue.

There is still considerable work required before students with disabilities have full and equitable access to the complete range of administrative and academic tools used in higher education. However, the IT Accessibility Center marks a significant step forward in educating and motivating IT leaders to help advance the state of accessibility. To view the conference schedule maintained by EDUCAUSE, visit http://www.educause.edu/wiki/Accessibility+@+EDUCAUSE+2010.

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