AccessComputing News - February 2019: All Articles

We are excited to announce that three new institutional partners have joined AccessComputing: Macalester College, represented by Assistant Professor Lauren Milne; New York University, represented by Associate Professor Amy Hurts; and Wichita State University, represented by Associate Professor Vinod Namboodri. This is Lauren's first year at Macalester after graduating from the University of Washington (UW) in August 2018. Lauren is active in accessibility research while holding down a significant teaching load. Amy Hurst is a new professor at New York University with a joint appointment in the Occupational Therapy Department and the Technology, Culture and Society Department. She joined NYU after spending 8 years at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Vinod is an expert on mobile computing and wireless networks with a strong interest in accessibility. He runs the ACCESS Lab at Wichita State, which explores information technologies to benefit people with disabilities and older adults.

We also have a new industry partner, Abilitrek. Abilitrek is a multifaceted company with the mission of improving accessibility and empowering people with disabilities. AbiliTrek CEO Daman Wandke was an AccessComputing team member and has since hosted AccessComputing team members as interns.

We also have two new representatives. Assistant Professor Stacy Branham joins Gillian Hayes in representing the University of California, Irvine. Stacy is a graduate of Virginia Tech and formally a lecturer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is an active researcher in intersection of human-centered computing and accessible computing. Professor Jinjuan Heidi Feng will also join us, representing Towson University as Jonathan will soon be moving to the University of Maryland, College Park. Heidi is an active researcher in human-computer interaction, universal accessibility, health informatics, and accessible security.

Welcome to all our new representatives and thanks for your commitment to the goals of AccessComputing.

The CSforALL Consortium, an organization committed to bringing computer science (CS) education to all K-12 students, has recently worked to highlight accessibility of K-12 CS education. AccessCSforAll partnered with the CSforALL Consortium on a the CSforALL Accessibility Pledge, which will rally the national community of CS education content creators, program providers, educational institutions, researchers, and investors to take immediate steps to achieve accessibility for existing efforts and ensure that future efforts address accessibility within the design phase. Over one hundred organizations have signed the pledge this far.

To learn more and read the pledge, visit the CSforALL website.

In October, the pledge and related accessibility efforts were highlighted as part of the CSforALL Summit. AccessCSforAll PIs Richard Ladner and Andreas Stefik, as well as several of our collaborators were featured. Find recordings online of the following:

• CSforALL Accessibility Pledge
• Daryl ‘Chill’ Mitchell, Actor and Accessibility Advocate
• Accessible CS in Practice

AccessCSforAll is a collaboration between the Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, DO-IT, and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

The Accessing Higher Ground (AHG) conference is designed for college and university faculty and staff to ensure that information technology procured, developed, and used at their institutions is accessible to all. At the 2018 conference, Terrill Thompson, our technology accessibility specialist, Sheryl Burgstahler, AccessComputing Co-PI, and Richard Ladner, AccessComputing PI, spoke and provided behind-the-scenes support at the conference through the following activities:

• Terrill and Sheryl engaged with colleagues from other institutions in a two-day workshop about how campuses can take steps towards increased IT accessibility.
• Sheryl presented on the design of campus IT accessibility services when the availability of resources is low, as well as on how a universal design framework might be embraced campus-wide.
• Terrill offered a workshop on accessible video design.
• Sheryl led a capacity-building institute focused on how computing faculty can incorporate accessibility content in their courses, and Terrill and Richard, who leads our AccessComputing project, presented.
• Terrill taught participants how to audio describe videos.
• Richard reported the results of a survey that sought to determine what percentage of computing faculty already teach about accessibility and shared options for doing so.

To see proceedings from the capacity building institute on teaching accessibility, visit the AccessComputing website.

AccessComputing also honored the AHG founder and director, Howard Kramer, with the AccessComputing Capacity Building Award for his efforts in drawing together leaders and newcomers in accessibility by hosting the international AHG conference for 21 years.

I am blind, a father of three daughters, a non-traditional student, and a senior at University of Maryland (UMD), College Park majoring in information science at the UMD iSchool hoping to specialize in human-computer interaction in graduate studies. I value education not only in the practical sense but also for how it shapes me as a person and allows me to contribute to our society.

This summer, I participated in the Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) program, a summer internship program supporting female and underrepresented students. I found out about this opportunity from Dr. Hernisa Kacorri, an Assistant Professor at UMD. I was interested in her research on accessibility and wanted to work with her over the summer. After expressing my interest, she invited me to join her research lab, the Intelligent Assistive Machines (IAM) Lab, and she directed me to AccessComputing.

This project is very close to my heart as it allows me to contribute to novel assistive technologies that can improve the lives of people with visual impairments. It was also a fun project that gave me the opportunity to interact with graduate students and learn how to conduct research.

My task involved helping with the design and implementation of the data collection process that will serve as a benchmark for our machine learning algorithms. This involved engineering the stimuli and all possible variables for photo taking of everyday objects by blind users. I contributed to the first dataset that is currently being replicated. This dataset plays an important role in the project as it will be used to train and test computer vision models to be incorporated in a wearable or mobile device as a teachable objection application for blind users. Specifically, blind participants will be training the mobile application with snapshots of object of interest and can provide custom labels as well as object descriptions through audio.

Prior studies show that there are many benefits for people who are blind and visually impaired living in their own homes rather than assisted living facilities. We are hoping that the assistive technologies from this project will help in this direction.

I had an awesome experience working as a team member of such a diverse group. Working with graduate students and hearing their stories post-undergrad was very rewarding and eye-opening. It was also a great networking experience as I attended research talks and got to discuss with research visitors about their work. Specifically, I would like to thank Dr. Kacorri for setting up a meeting with Ali Abdolrahmani. Ali was the first blind Ph.D. student that I have met. Not only were our discussion fruitful, but also through him I got introduced to an entire network of blind researchers.

I had an excellent time working at the IAM Lab. I owe this to many people, including AccessComputing. This alliance has helped me in so many ways, and I would recommend any fellow student who is blind or visually impaired to join them.

Also, finding a reader or scribe right before the summer is hard. Students often leave for summer vacations or internships. I would recommend reaching out early on.

Being able to do what I love for an entire summer has been a priceless experience. Through this program, I learned technical skills such as programming in HTML and LaTeX as well as analytical thinking, reading scholarly articles, and experimental design processes.

The DREU internship program has helped me accomplish my goals in gaining research experience and pursuing research opportunities for future graduate studies. And why stop at a master’s degree? Initiatives like AccessComputing empower students like me to dream further and leverage their life experiences to make a better world. Hopefully, next time you hear from me, I will be a Ph.D. student.

AccessComputing affiliates were prominent in both attending and publishing at the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility held from October 21-24, 2018 in Galway, Ireland. This conference, known succinctly as “ASSETS,” is the premiere forum for disseminating research results in the field of accessible computing. ASSETS brings together experts from around the world who do research, teach, and advocate on topics related to technology and people with disabilities. Many of the scientists and inventors who attend ASSETS are people with disabilities, adding a degree of insight, authenticity, and expertise to the conversations at the conference. The conference also attracts a thorough mix of professors and students, as well as research scientists from industry. For example, multiple researchers from Microsoft Research, an AccessComputing partner, were in attendance, including Meredith Ringel Morris and Ed Cutrell.

In fact, AccessComputing members were in strong attendance in general. From the University of Washington, professors Richard Ladner and Jacob O. Wobbrock were there. Professors from partner universities were also in attendance, including Kristen Shinohara and Matt Huenerfauth from the Rochester Institute of Technology; Kyle Rector from the University of Iowa; Shaun Kane from the University of Colorado Boulder; Shiri Azenkot from Cornell Tech; and Jeffrey Bigham from Carnegie Mellon University, among many others. The ASSETS 2018 proceedings were chock-full of research publications from AccessComputing members as well. In fact, about 20 of 35 papers at the conference had at least one author affiliated with AccessComputing! Clearly, there are too many to list here, but here are some highlights by AccessComputing affiliates:

• The 2018 Best Paper award went to “Modeling the Speed and Timing of American Sign Language to Generate Realistic Animations” by Sedeeq Al-khazraji, Larwan Berke, Sushant Kafle, Peter Yeung, and Matt Huenerfauth.
• The 2018 Best Student Paper went to “Interdependence as a Frame for Assistive Technology Research and Design” by Cynthia Bennett, Erin Brady, and Stacy Branham.
• A Best Paper nominee was “ ‘It Looks Beautiful but Scary’: How Low Vision People Navigate Stairs and Other Surface Level Changes” by Yuhang Zhao, Elizabeth Kupferstein, Doron Tal, and Shiri Azenkot.
• Another Best Paper nominee was “Exploring the Data Tracking and Sharing Preferences of Wheelchair Athletes” by Patrick Carrington, Gierad Laput, and Jeffrey Bigham.

These highlights are just a few of the standout papers with AccessComputing-affiliated authors at the conference. They, and many other affiliated papers, demonstrate the strong commitment to developing and improving accessible technologies by affiliates of AccessComputing. They also represent a glimpse into the future, fitting for a conference that was held in one of Europe’s westernmost towns, with wide-open views of unending ocean stretching out to infinite possibilities. ASSETS 2018 in Galway, Ireland, will surely be one to remember!

OurCS@UW+AccessComputing is a two-day research-focused workshop for undergraduate women with disabilities in computing fields to be held Thursday, April 11 – Saturday, April 13 at the University of Washington. Female students with disabilities nationwide in computing fields are eligible to apply. Students will participate in group research projects designed to inspire participants to consider research careers and learn about faculty and graduate student mentors' current research.

Transportation, housing, and meals will be provided for participants. Funding is provided by Google Explore CSR, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and AccessComputing.

The application deadline has passed, but applications will still be considered as space allows. Apply now!

I am a doctoral candidate at Virginia Tech exploring how disability is discussed within institutions of higher education. I share a lot about me and my studies on my blog. I was interested in attending Tapia this year to share how the group I work with, Accessible Technologies, made strides this year with two internal campaigns to get the message across to all people working or attending Virginia Tech that accessibility is an achievable goal. For 2018-2019, we are focused on addressing captioning and color contrast issues with professional development and easy-to-follow guides. We have promoted these campaigns to faculty, staff, and students, urging them to “Keep C.A.L.M. (Choosing Accessible Learning Materials)” in their own work.

My favorite parts of the conference were sharing my own experiences during the “Welcoming Students with Disabilities” panel and getting to know other attendees. While working at the booth with others from AccessComputing, I got to know people who I had only associated with names on papers or emails. I also got to know a great new friend and doctoral student from University of Florida, Rua Williams; we now can collaborate and push each other to submit our work to different conferences and journals because we can share that information! This new friendship demonstrates why networking is such an important part of going to a conference. Getting to know new people who are interested in your work is both thrilling and overwhelming—it’s okay to be excited!

To those who have never previously been to a conference, I would suggest checking the schedule of events before getting to the conference. This is important for a variety of reasons: you can decide what panels or presentations you want to attend, figure out how to travel between rooms, and make sure you plan time for meals. Knowing the schedule helps you plan.

Using the schedule will also let you figure out a few names of people whose work you think is interesting. You might want to research their other work ahead of time. You might want to come up with a game plan to introduce yourself. Getting to know people at a conference is not like an interview, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself!

I’d also like to leave you with some thoughts on conference accessibility. I’ve always found that I have a better conference experience when I request that my access needs be met, instead of trying to ignore them. Supporting others with their requests also helps organizers recognize that accessibility is a broader issue beyond ramps and stairs. Considerations such as how rooms are laid out, the presence of microphones, captioning, lighting, food—it all goes into planning. This can be difficult for those unfamiliar with accessibility, which is why the Gender, Bodies, and Technology group reached out and enlisted me as the Accessibility Coordinator for their 2019 conference. Networking with people and my experiences at different conferences led to this opportunity for me to use my knowledge and skills to benefit a larger group. What could going to conferences bring you?

Below are the articles of the AccessComputing News February 2019 newsletter. These articles can also be seen all on one page at the Full Newsletter option.