AccessComputing News - February 2018: All Articles

One of the AccessCSforAll Principal Investigators (PI) Andreas Stefik released a second accessible Hour of Code Activity this fall, just in time for Computer Science Education Week. The new Hour of Code explores astronomy and uses the Quorum programming language. Quorum is an evidence-based programming language that is design to be accessible.

Based on the traffic, the new Hour of Code is a great success with over 57,000 page views during Computer Science Education Week alone. The Quorum Hours of Code are the only accessible tutorials included in the Hour of Code activities, thereby opening up this opportunity to students with disabilities who may not otherwise be able to participate.

Learn more about Quorum and other AccessCSforAll initiatives here.

Over the past year, the AccessComputing team has worked on a national survey on teaching accessibility. We reached out to 14,176 computing and information science faculty at all institutions of higher education in the United States, and received 1,857 full responses.

The goal of the survey was to learn who is teaching accessibility, what they are teaching, and what barriers faculty see to teaching about accessibility. We found that, of those who responded, about 20% reported teaching something about accessibility in at least one of their courses. Overall, this represents a minimum of 2.5% of faculty surveyed. While this may seem small, about 50% of the institutions that responded had at least one elective course that taught something about accessibility and 75 institutions had at least two faculty teaching accessibility. There were only 17 self-described faculty accessibility experts, spread across 14 institutions.

Of the faculty who responded, those who teach accessibility were twice as likely to be female, twice as likely to view accessibility as part of computer science (CS) curricula, three times as likely to have expertise in accessibility, and about 1.5 times as likely to know someone who has a disability.

Most importantly, even amongst faculty who do not teach accessibility, most respondents believed that accessibility should be taught in CS. They just did not believe they had enough expertise and did not know how the topic connected to their specific sub-areas of CS.

AccessComputing and Teach Access are using these results to prepare new materials that provide this missing expertise and these missing links to CS curriculum.

In their December newsletter, the College Board ran an article about the importance of having access to coding and other aspects of computer science. Last year, with the creation of a new Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles course (AP CSP), the College Board opened doors for underrepresented groups in computing, including students with disabilities.

Last year, Grady Thompson, a 2015 Scholar and AccessComputing team member, took AP CSP. “The AP CSP course in high school solidified my interest in computing fields and motivated me to apply to the informatics program at the University of Washington,” said Grady.

To increase the accessibility of their AP CSP class, the College Board has partnered with AccessCSforAll. Richard Ladner, AccessComputing and AccessCSforAll PI, says they are “working together to create a fully accessible version of AP CSP that uses research-based accessible tools such as the Quorum programming language.”

Read the full article here.

ABET is the accrediting board for college and university programs in the disciplines of applied and natural science, computing, engineering and engineering technology at the associate, bachelor, and master degree levels. For 2017-2018 ABET added "accessibility" as one of the potential constraints in its definition of "Engineering Design." This is in recognition that people with disabilities should be considered as users of products and services that are developed by engineers and computer scientists. It also reflects the desire by companies to hire students who have some experience in accessible design.

The ABET definition of Engineering Design now reads as follows: "Engineering design is the process of devising a system, component, or process to meet desired needs and specifications within constraints. It is an iterative, creative, decision-making process in which the basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources into solutions. The process involves identifying opportunities, performing analysis and synthesis, generating multiple solutions, evaluating those solutions against requirements, considering risks, and making trade-offs to identify a high quality solution under the given circumstances. For illustrative purposes only, examples of possible constraints include accessibility, aesthetics, constructability, cost, ergonomics, functionality, interoperability, legal considerations, maintainability, manufacturability, policy, regulations, schedule, sustainability, or usability" (our emphasis).

This is just one of the reasons you may want to teach accessibility. See the AccessComputing website for more.

Apple has done a good job in recent years of building products that are usable by people who have a variety of characteristics. In iOS, the operating system that drives Apple’s mobile devices, there are dozens of features available under Settings > General > Accessibility, grouped into categories “Vision,” “Interaction,” “Hearing,” “Media,” and “Learning.” Screen reader users in particular are drawn to iOS devices due a numerous accessibility features, as seen in WebAIM’s latest Screen Reader User Survey.

In November 2017, Apple released the iPhone X, the first in Apple’s next generation of smart phones. The accessibility community expressed some initial concerns about the impact of new iPhone X design choices and features on accessibility. Concerns focused primarily on two features: Elimination of the home button and Face ID. 

No More Home Button

Prior to iPhone X, the Home button provided a large tactile target that users could press in order to perform various functions. For example, tapping once returned users to the home screen. Tapping twice could be configured to enable “Reachability,” a feature that lowers the top of app windows so users with limited hand dexterity can more easily access common controls located at the top of apps. Tapping three times could be configured to serve as an “Accessibility Shortcut,” used to toggle a single accessibility feature or display a menu of multiple accessibility-related features, depending on how users configured it.

Eliminating the Home button left questions as to how users would perform these important functions. Fortunately, all functions are still supported, just by using different methods. Users can return to the home screen by swiping up from the bottom of the screen; they can enable “Reachability” by swiping down from the bottom of the screen; and they can initiate the “Accessibility Shortcut” by tapping three times on the side button.

Whether these methods are as accessible as using the Home button is a question of some debate. Swiping up or down from the bottom of the screen requires some dexterity, and has different results if the user starts too far from the bottom or holds their finger on the screen too long. Also, tapping three times on the side button requires careful precision, as tapping twice opens Apple Pay, and (more critically) tapping five times initiates “Emergency SOS”, which automatically calls 911. If accidentally triggering the latter is a concern, it can be configured (in Settings > “Emergency SOS”) to wait for three seconds prior to calling 911, during which time the user can cancel the call. It can also be disabled altogether, although having easy access to emergency services is arguably a nice feature.

Face ID

The other feature that has caused some initial concern, particularly within the blind/low vision community, is Face ID. This is one of the highest profile new features of the iPhone X, as it showcases new levels of sophistication in face recognition technology. Face ID uses automatic face recognition for unlocking the phone, downloading apps from the App Store, or conducting financial transactions using Apple Pay. Apple claims their face recognition technology, which uses 3D modeling of the user’s facial features, is more secure than fingerprint recognition. It’s also an accessibility improvement for people who have no fingers or fingerprints.

For people who are blind, the process of setting up Face ID is reasonably accessible using VoiceOver (the screen reader that comes with iOS). VoiceOver coaches users through the setup process with prompts such as “Move iPhone a little higher” and “Tilt your head up and to the right.” However, once Face ID is setup, it requires users to gaze directly into the phone, which is a difficult task for users who are unable to see. Even if VoiceOver provides verbal assistance, this can be a much more burdensome process than touching the device with a finger. Fortunately, Face ID is optional with the iPhone X. Users can control which features require it, or they can disable it altogether, in which case the iPhone falls back to other security methods.

Summary

iPhone X still has the dozens of accessibility features that iPhone users are accustomed to. However, Face ID and the lack of a home button are changes that some users may find problematic. As an alternative, the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus were released shortly prior to the iPhone X, and offer many of the same improvements (e.g., faster processor, better camera, water resistant, wireless charging) yet still have a home button and Touch ID. To compare all three models (or other older models), visit Apple's website.