AccessComputing News - November 2021: All Articles

In addition to an Extension of our AccessComputing project, DO-IT is excited to announce two new computing-related grants from the National Science Foundation. These grants build upon our history of making computing fields more welcoming and accessible to people with disabilities.

AccessCSforAll is a continuing collaboration between the University of Washington and the University of Nevada Las Vegas with the goal of including more K-12 students with disabilities in computing classes. The project aims to decrease barriers such as inaccessible tools and curriculum while improving access to quality computer science education for students with disabilities. Building on our previous work with developing an accessible version of AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) and leading the professional development for teachers who specialize in students with disabilities, AccessCSforAll will develop new tools and curricula that can be adopted by a variety of development and curriculum providers. In addition, AccessCSforAll will extend its researcher practitioner partnership (RPP) to include CS curriculum providers, in-service and pre-service providers, and organizations that support K-12 CS teachers. This partnership will lead to the adoption of more accessible tools and curricula in the teaching of computer science nationally. AccessCSforAll is led by PIs Richard Ladner and Andreas Stefik and co-PI Sheryl Burgstahler.

This project includes partnerships with developers of accessible tools and curricula for K-12 students and will work as a national resource for CS teachers to help them better include students with disabilities in their classes. The primary goal of the project is to scale up past efforts to make computer science classes equitable and welcoming to all students in the United States. It will create and deploy an age-appropriate accessible blocks-based programming environment for the web called Quorum Blocks. Quorum Blocks will allow students to engage in accessible coding in blocks mode or text mode. Curriculum providers and teachers can embed it into any curriculum of their own design. This expansion will work towards reaching the approximately 16% of high school students who have a disability. AccessCSforAll represents one of the first comprehensive steps to provide that scaling up to include these students in computer science.

Our other newly funded computing-related project is brand new—Creating and Testing Data Science Learning Tools for Secondary Students with Disabilities. PIs include Andreas Stefik (University of Nevada Las Vegas), Nicholas Giudice (University of Maine), Jenna Gorlewicz (University of St Louis), and DO-IT’s Brianna Blaser. The main goal of this collaborative project is to create and evaluate a universally accessible data science infrastructure for high-school-aged learners, with a focus on students with disabilities. Data science is critical in the development of industry-relevant computational thinking skills. Computing initiatives, including data science, are rapidly growing because of the compelling career pathways that data science skills provide. A careful investigation into already-at-scale data science initiatives shows that such tools and curriculum are largely not accessible to individuals with disabilities, nor do they have a strong foundation of human factors evidence supporting their designs. These issues are crucial and must be resolved for workforce equity and a diverse science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline.

This project will bring together investigators in computer science, mechanical engineering, education, social science, and cognitive neuroscience to rethink the tools that support the teaching and learning of data science at the high school level. The overarching goal will be to create and evaluate data science tools and curriculum that are not just in legal compliance for accessibility, but that carefully take into account the needs of learners, including those with disabilities. By creating, deploying, and rigorously evaluating the first data science tool and curriculum that is accessible to all, the project intends to help create equitable pathways for all students to enter the field of data science.

Elaine Schaertl Short is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Tufts University. She completed her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Maja Matarić in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC). She received her master of science in computer science (CS) from USC in 2012 and her bachelor of science in computer science from Yale University in 2010. From 2017-2019 she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. At USC, she received numerous awards for her contributions to research, teaching, and service, including being one of very few PhD students to have received all three of the CS department Best Teaching Assistant, Best Research Assistant, and Service awards.

Elaine’s research seeks to improve the computational foundations of human-robot interaction by designing new algorithms that succeed in contexts where other algorithms’ assumptions frequently fail, such as in child-robot interaction, in minimally-supervised public space deployments, and in assistive interactions. She is equally committed to human-centered research practices as she is to algorithm and robot design: she has co-authored more than 50 works on human-robot interaction spanning from designing a low-cost open-source open-hardware robot platform, to understanding family group interactions with socially assistive robots, to designing new neural network architectures for sim-to-real model transfer in robot learning. Recently, Elaine led a team of researchers at Tufts who received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Robotics Initiative 3.0 with the goal of transforming our understanding of assistive robotics as a largely one-directional process in which the robot provides assistance to the user to a bi-directional process of mutually assistive robotics, in which assistance flows equally from user to robot and from robot to user. Since establishing the Assistive Agent Behavior and Learning (AABL) Lab at Tufts in 2019, the group has grown to include four PhD students and numerous undergraduate and master's students. Elaine is building a track record of encouraging and supporting her advisees in connecting with careers in research: all three of her research mentees who have graduated since 2019 have gone on to PhD programs.

As a disabled faculty member, Elaine is particularly passionate about disability rights in her service work. In addition to having recently joined the new AccessComputing Leadership Corps, she is the communications chair and community liaison of AccessSIGCHI, an advocacy group that works to increase the accessibility of the 24 SIGCHI conferences. Elaine is also the vice Chair of the Tufts CS Department committee on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, and has served as the 2021 and 2022 accessibility chair for the ACM/IEEE Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.

OurCS@AccessComputing+CREATE was a research-focused workshop for undergraduates with disabilities in computing fields that was held virtually on Wednesday, January 13 through Friday, January 15, 2021. UW's CREATE (Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences), aims to make technology accessible and to make the world accessible through technology. CREATE is an AccessComputing partner. 

Forty-six undergraduate students from around the nation participated in the workshop along with ten mentoring faculty members from a variety of research areas. The keynote speakers were Elaine Short from Tufts University, Nicholas Giudice from the University of Maine, and Jeanine Cook from Sandia National Laboratory. There were plenary presentations on applying to graduate school and succeeding in graduate school. A panel of senior and recently finished graduate students with disabilities talked about their own experiences in graduate school. Each of the mentors led a short course on research in their area of expertise. There was also time for networking among students and mentors. 

Eddith Figueroa from the University of Texas at Austin appreciated hearing about the panelists’ experiences. “I really enjoyed the panel of people who were in grad school. It gave me a lot of perspective into what it would be like to try and go to grad school with a disability,” Figueroa said. 

Cameron Cassidy from Texas A&M University highlighted the information about graduate school, saying, “Professors Milne and Ladner shared a lot of good information about graduate school, which made me more comfortable in my decision to pursue an advanced degree.” 

Nayha Auradkar of the University of Washington found the networking opportunities valuable. “I learned a lot through networking with research leaders and engaging in interactive research workshops,” Auradkar said. 

Funding for this workshop was provided by Google Explore CSR with additional support from AccessComputing and the UW Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE). 

The 2021 CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference (Tapia Conference) was held virtually September 15-18, 2021. There were 126 sessions over the three days, with 22 containing disability or accessibility-related topics. Of the 22, three were led by AccessComputing staff, and another nine were led by AccessComputing Partner representatives. 

AccessComputing Partner representatives were also active in the leadership of the conference. Patti Ordonez from University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras was the program chair, Brianna Blaser from the University of Washington was the accessibility chair, Raja Kushalnagar from Gallaudet University was the academic and workshop deputy chair, Stephanie Ludi from the University of North Texas was the technical panels and workshops chair, and Elaine Short was the scholarship deputy chair. It was wonderful to see so many of our partners involved in the success of the conference.

Highlights of the conference were the keynote addresses by Jenny Lay-Flurrie, chief accessibility officer at Microsoft and Cecilia Aragon, professor in the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, both of whom have disabilities. Lay-Flurrie described her work at Microsoft to help make the company more accessible and welcoming for employees with disabilities and Microsoft’s commitment to making its products and services accessible. Aragon, who is also Latina, described her youth as a very shy person without much confidence, who, with encouragement from her family, gained the confidence to become a pilot of the US Aerobatics Team. Both were very inspirational. 

We congratulate Aboubakar Mountapmbeme, a graduate student of Stephanie Ludi (the representative from University of North Texas as an AccessComputing Partner), who won the Tapia 2021 Doctoral Consortium Best Presentation Award for his work “Understanding and Addressing Accessibility Barriers Faced by People with Visual Impairments on Block-based Programming Environments.” ​​We also congratulate AccessComputing Research Experience for Undergraduate participant and student at Western Washington University, Erin Howard whose “Leveraging Statistical Analysis to Develop Classification Labels for Astronomical Time Series Data” took second place in the poster competition.

A theme of five of the sessions related to disability was on the mental health of students. This reflects the added stress on students, and all of us, during the long COVID-19 pandemic and since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. It is good to see mental health being part of the Tapia agenda and part of the conversation about diversity. 

The session by Christine Chai on “My Autism Journey: From Self-Doubt to Acceptance” described her experiences from learning she was autistic to finding a satisfying position working in data science at Microsoft. Her path was not a straightforward path but one of self-discovery and self-advocacy. Congratulations to Dr. Chai on her wonderful session.
 

The University of Washington DO-IT Center is a partner organization in two different INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science) Alliances recently funded by the National Science Foundation.

NSF INCLUDES TAPDINTO-STEM Alliance 

The first is for $800,000 to lead West Coast activities of the NSF INCLUDES Alliance of Students with Disabilities for Inclusion, Networking, and Transition Opportunities in STEM, also known as the NSF INCLUDES TAPDINTO-STEM Alliance. The nationwide project will employ a collective impact approach with dozens of partnering organizations to increase the number of students with disabilities who complete associate, baccalaureate, and graduate STEM degrees and enter the STEM workforce.

Auburn University is leading this NSF INCLUDES Alliance’s primary partnerships with five institutions of higher education (IHE) that will direct regional hubs of collaborating IHEs to address this national need. The hubs will be championed by Auburn University, Northern Arizona University, The Ohio State University, the University of Hawaii-Manoa, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and the University of Washington.

On the University of Washington team, DO-IT Program Manager Scott Bellman will serve as the UW project director and lead activities of the West Coast Hub. The UW's Eric Chudler will serve as a lead mentor and STEM educator. The West Coast Hub, which currently includes San Diego State University and the University of Alaska Anchorage, will provide support to students with disabilities and provide training and engagement with postsecondary educators and administrators. A research component will compare information from the NSF INCLUDES TAPDINTO-STEM Alliance students with data from an ongoing DO-IT longitudinal study to examine which interventions students regard as most valuable, investigate patterns linking student demographics or interests with the interventions used, and study suggestions for improving or expanding interventions.

Learn more about this project through the Auburn news announcement.

The Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing Education (AIICE)

DO-IT is also a partner in the Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing Education (AIICE), which is led by Nicki Washington and Shaundra Daily at Duke University. AIICE was awarded $10 million to develop tools and strategies in computing education that increase the entry, retention and course or degree completion rates of high school and undergraduate students from historically underrepresented groups. As a partner organization, DO-IT will work closely with members of the Alliance to ensure that activities are accessible and welcoming to people with disabilities. DO-IT staff member Brianna Blaser, who serves as associate director of AccessComputing, will lead DO-IT’s engagement. 

AIICE will focus on creating more equitable computing spaces, which will encourage technology creators from a diverse range of identities to occupy development and leadership positions in order to avoid creating potentially harmful technologies such as facial recognition and predictive policing. However, this possibility will take an investment from the entire community--bringing together a large group of computer science educators at the high school and post-secondary level.

AIICE will create systemic change by blending aspects of social science with computer science to increase student and educator knowledge of identity and related topics; support computer science educators and leaders nationwide in fostering academic cultures that are more inclusive of non-dominant identities; and increase policy-driven changes to computer science education in K-12 schools and higher education that infuse identity-inclusive strategies.

Learn more about AIICE through the Duke news announcement.

The 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2021) was held virtually October 18-22, 2021. AccessComputing partner representatives served as general chair (Jonathan Lazar), program co-chair (Heidi Feng), and treasurer/registration chair (Kristen Shinohara). The conference celebrated two 50 year anniversaries, ACM SIGACCESS and the Trace Center. SIGACCESS has been the sponsor of the ASSETS conference since its inception in 1994. The Trace Center, started by Gregg Vanderheiden in 1971 is a major contributor to technology and technology policy related to disability (see the accompanying article in this issue). Two panels of “old timers” discussed the history of SIGACCESS and the contributions of the Trace Center. There was also a rich program of keynote addresses, technical papers, experience reports, panels, posters, demos, artifact competition, and a doctoral consortium. 

The ASSETS doctoral consortium was held on the Friday before the conference. There were 424 people registered for the conference. Participation was by Zoom and Discord. All sessions had captioning and American Sign Language translation. Most presentations were prerecorded with live question and answer sessions following the recordings. There were two keynote presentations, one by Axel Leblois, a well-known speaker on ICT accessibility, and Annalu Waller, Professor at the Dundee University, Scotland, who is well known for her work on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). There were 35 technical papers, 6 experience reports, 14 presentations of Transactions on Accessible Computing papers, 68 posters and demos, and 14 submissions to the Artifact Award. Among the many presentations at the conference there are authors who were current or former AccessComputing students and AccessComputing partner representatives.

On the last day awards were announced for Best Paper, Best Student Paper, and the winners of the Artifact Competition. In addition, the 2021 SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award was also announced at the conference (see the accompanying article in this issue). As a personal note ASSETS 2021 was the best online technical conference that I have attended so far during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only was it highly accessible with high quality content, it was fun. There was a 1970s Zoom dance party and a 1970s-themed singalong. Congratulations to all the organizers for making ASSETS 2021 so successful.
 

AccessComputing partners, Jennifer Mankoff, representing the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE) at the University of Washington, and Gillian Hayes, representing the University of California, Irvine, along with their co-author Devva Kasnitz, are winners of the 2021 SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award. The award is given out every two years to an ASSETS paper published at least 10 years ago and has had a significant impact on computing and information technology that addresses the needs of persons with disabilities. The award recognizes work that presents a significant innovation or contribution to knowledge that has proved influential over time. The paper titled “Disability Studies as a Source of Critical Inquiry for the Field of Assistive Technology” appeared in the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010). The paper points out the connections between the field of disability studies and accessible computing by examining several case studies where the concepts from disability studies influenced that work in accessible computing. The paper gives advice to accessible computing researchers on how to employ the concepts of disabilities studies in their work.

Congratulations to co-PI Stacy Branham for her recent award. Popular Science magazine has named AccessComputing co-PI Stacy Branham as one of its Brilliant 10 for 2021. According to the magazine, "These US-based engineers, psychologists, chemists, and more are taking on society's biggest challenges across the world. " The profile highlights Stacy's work to adapt technology for people with disabilities. Read The Brilliant 10: The most innovative up-and-coming minds in science.
 

Are you teaching a computing course? If so, do you teach about accessible and/or universal design? If you answered “yes" and “yes,” consider writing up a promising practice or research-oriented paper for the Journal of Postsecondary Education (JPED).

I will be a guest editor in spring 2022, driving the purpose of the issue to promote promising practices and lessons learned in incorporating accessible and/or universal design into curricula. This will encourage future professionals to learn about accessibility challenges for individuals with disabilities and how to design more inclusive IT projects and environments.

Check out information about the journal and author guidelines. I expect the deadline for submission to be early spring 2022. Feel free to contact DO-IT for more information about this special issue of JPED.