AccessComputing News - December 2022: All Articles

Since last spring, AccessComputing has welcomed several new partners to our project. AccessComputing partners are committed to increasing the participation of people with disabilities in computing education and careers. They take steps to make their departments or organizations inclusive and welcoming to people with disabilities. Our partners engage in a Community of Practice and monthly meetings focused on accessibility.

Our new partners over the past six months come both from institutions and companies:

• Centre College, Thomas Allen
• Open Education Research Lab, Samuel Abramovich and Rachel Bonnette
• Drake University, Meredith Moore
• University of Virginia, Siri Russell
• University of Texas at Austin, Earl Huff
• Grinnell College, Sam Rebelsky
• Florida Institute of Technology, Nasheen Nur
• Purdue, Rua Williams
• Northeastern University, Megan Hofmann
• Boston University, Emily Whiting
• George Mason University's new representative, Wing Lam
• ASRC Federal, Shavondalyn Givens and Spencer Broste
• Our Ability, John Robinson and Kartik Sawhney
• Scopes, Derrick Adam
• GitHub, Ed Summers

To learn more about becoming an AccessComputing partner email accesscomp@uw.edu.

Multiple AccessComputing Team Members graduated with PhDs this year. Congratulations to them all. Below are the students who announced their graduation and let us know what the future holds:

• Heriberto Acosta Maestre received his Ph.D. in information systems from the College of Computing and Engineering at Nova Southeastern University. His dissertation titled "The Empirical Study of the Factors that Influence Threat Avoidance Behavior in Ransomware Security Incidents" focused on studying threat avoidance behavior in the context of ransomware security incidents among college students. He is interested in information security, human computing interactions, health data science, and data mining applications. Heriberto continues to work as the distributed learning program training administrator in the Puerto Rico National Guard. He volunteered at the Tapia 2022 conference as deputy chair of posters.
• Huy Từ defended their dissertation on the topic of "Reducing Effort of Labeling Software Engineering Data with Semi-supervised Learning" from North Carolina State University. Beside their PhD's dissertation topic, they are also invested in linguistic and machine learning fairness domains. Currently, Huy is following their passions in investigating and mitigating biases in decision-making at one of the big five tech companies.
• Carl C Haynes-Magyar received his Ph.D. in information from the University of Michigan School of Information in the winter semester of 2022. His dissertation is titled "On Learning How to Program via an Interactive eBook with Parsons Problems." Carl's research broadly focuses on how people learn and how people learn how to learn to design theory-based learning technologies for computing education that support symbiotic relationships between learners and artificial intelligence. In the fall of 2022, Carl began as a presidential postdoctoral fellow at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University with Dr. Kenneth R. Koedinger.
• Shamma Nasrin received her Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois Chicago. Some of her research interests include neuromorphic computing, deep learning neural networks, and low-power and high-performance in-memory processing systems.
• Andrea Lane received her Ph.D. in biostatistics in August 2022 from Emory University. Her dissertation is titled “Detecting Cell-type-specific Mediation Effects in DNA Methylation Data.” She is passionate about statistics/data science education and incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion principles into statistics courses. She is now an assistant professor of the practice at Duke University in the master of interdisciplinary data science (MIDS) program.
• Dhruv Jain received his Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington in spring 2022. His dissertation is entitled “Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People.” He is now an assistant professor in computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan. His research intersects human-computer interaction (HCI) and applied machine learning (ML), with a focus on sound accessibility.
• Elba Garza received a Ph.D. in computer science from Texas A&M University. Her work focused on making hardware predictive structures and policies more resilient to evolving computing demands. Over the last few years, Elba has earned honors such as the 2020 IEEE Computer Society Lance Stafford Larson Student Award, named a 2020 Rising Star in EECS, and was a 2021 Google Scholar. She is currently an assistant teaching professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington.

Congratulations to all those who graduated and are moving forward to the next steps in their careers.

For students with disabilities, Gallaudet University has launched a new Master of Science in Accessible Human-Centered Computing (AHCC), designed for deaf, hard of hearing, and other students with disabilities who seek specialized academic training in designing, evaluating, and implementing effective evidence-based accessible design and evaluation strategies and messages to address the accessibility needs of diverse audiences.

Gallaudet University (GU) is a fully accessible environment offering a unique, American Sign Language and English learning environment for all faculty, students, and staff. Students are immersed in a language-rich learning environment; students and faculty communicate as directly as possible, modeling and building habits of academic discourse in ASL and English. In doing this we ensure our community will learn for the rest of their lives and careers through the lens of ASL and English bilingualism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

AHCC students take classes with research and policy activities that leverage Gallaudet University’s unique expertise in accessible computing through a deaf and hard of hearing-centric lens. They gain practical hands-on experience in accessible design through both coursework and participating in ongoing accessible research and development projects run at Gallaudet University and its partners. Much of the instruction is interactive and includes the use of new and emerging accessible technologies, making students well-prepared to meet the organizational demands for accessible technology.

The program, led by Dr. Christian Vogler and me, Dr. Raja Kushalnagar, is structured in terms of cohorts with students progressing through the program as a group. This format not only ensures on-time program completion, but also maximizes interaction with faculty and fellow students and networking. Industry experts will offer support and advice, along with internship opportunities. As the first university-level program of its kind, this program is unique in offering both academic and hands-on training. The coursework and community collaboration activities also serve as an incubator for accessible research and policy. 

As an AccessComputing Co-PI, I also focus on increasing the numbers of people with disabilities in the computing pipeline through community involvement. In addition, I bring consumers, industry, and policymakers together on accessibility issues with focus on deaf/hard of hearing perspectives and evidence-based research, and advocate for laws and regulations to incorporate accessible computing advances such as automatic captioning/subtitling. I have mentored over 100 undergraduates, including over 60 who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Able Player

In November 2022, Able Player 4.5 was released. Able Player is an online media player created with accessibility in mind. It’s the only media player that supports all five kinds of timed text tracks defined by the HTML specification (captions, subtitles, descriptions, chapters, and metadata). It also includes many additional features such as an interactive transcript, support for synchronized sign language in a pop-up video window, a fully accessible set of buttons and controls, and a highly customizable interface through the preferences menu.

One of the biggest changes in the new release is the improvement to Able Player’s support for audio description as a timed text track, read aloud by browsers using the Web Speech API. This feature had been added in an earlier version, but it now works more reliably across all browsers and platforms. Users can customize the voice, rate, pitch, and volume in the description preferences dialog, as well as choose whether to automatically pause the video while description is playing (i.e., “extended audio description”). Also, if users speed up or slow down the video using the “faster” or “slower” buttons, the rate of description now changes as well, and description is now paused if users pause the video or skip back or forward to a new time.

Other features in the new release include captioning for audio and new settings that give authors more control over the default state of their video. For example, authors can set the default state of “extended description” to “on” if they know that pausing during description will be desirable for their videos, such as if their videos do not offer enough quiet time for description to be voiced.

Able Player 4.5 also features two new translations of all player controls, prompts, and messages. With the new Danish and Portuguese translations, Able Player is now available in 19 languages.

Accessible University

Also in November, a new version (version 3.0) of the Accessible University (AU) demo site was announced. AU is a fictional university, and the demo site features two versions of its home page, one “before” accessibility (a page with at least 22 known accessibility problems), and one “after” accessibility (the same page, with all 22 problems fixed). These pages are complemented by a third page that describes all the problems and their solutions.

The site was created as a tool for use in web accessibility trainings and workshops, although it can also be used independently as a self-training tool. The new version includes a variety of updates to reflect recent changes in accessibility coding techniques and best practices. Features that have been updated include the navigation menu, slideshow/carousel, data table, modal dialog, and online form with error validation. Also, video has been added to both the “before” and “after” pages. The “after” page uses the new version of Able Player for delivering accessible video with captions and audio description.

AU also includes a set of “before” and “after” Word, PDF, and PowerPoint files, designed to be used in trainings on document accessibility. All documents have been updated in the new release.

The new version of AU was unveiled in a half-day pre-conference workshop at the Accessing Higher Ground conference in Colorado on November 15. Attendees included people who were already using AU in their trainings and wanted to see what’s new, as well as people who had never seen the demo site before. The latter left the session excited with ideas for how they would utilize this tool on their own campuses. Attendees also provided excellent ideas for additional problems and solutions that could be added to the site, so we’re already eager to get started working on the next version.

I doubt if anyone hosting a meeting or delivering a presentation intentionally excludes those who have a right to be there. However, every day, meeting hosts and presenters erect barriers to some people, including those with disabilities. Several examples follow: 

• A person who is blind or connecting to a meeting by phone cannot effectively follow a presentation unless the presenter verbally describes critical content on slides.
• A person who is not blind but has a visual impairment may have difficulty reading content on a slide if the text is presented in a small font that is not sans serif on a background that is cluttered.
• An individual who is an English language learner or is deaf or hard of hearing may require captioning or a sign language interpreter.
• A person who needs more time to process the content will be disadvantaged unless a video recording is available.
• A person who is blind and using a screen reader to read aloud content in digital documents, slides, and websites will not be able to access information unless the materials are created in a text-based format that is structured to work well with their technology.
• An individual with a reading-related disability and using text-to-speech software to read aloud content presented in written materials will be disadvantaged in reading them if they are not in a text-based format.

When Maryland’s 900,000 K-12 public school students hung up their backpacks in March 2020, where most remained for the next 18 months, the locus of teaching and learning shifted to Chromebooks and Zoom classrooms. The 24 school systems across Maryland state moved massive amounts of technology and Internet hotspots into students’ homes to facilitate access and ramped up their purchases of subscriptions and licenses for e-book repositories, math portals, digital science and social studies content, and more. But some of these digital tools did not meet basic accessibility standards, leaving students with visual impairments and other disabilities behind as their classmates and teachers scrambled to continue progressing in the required curriculum. When most students returned to school buildings in fall 2021, many digital tools became embedded in the curriculum, broadening the impact of inaccessibility.

The problem posed by inaccessible digital instructional tools was not created by the pandemic and school building closures, but the experiences of the past two years highlighted the issues faced by many students with disabilities and sharpened the focus of advocates and legislators in the Maryland General Assembly. In 2021, a first attempt to tackle this issue legislatively failed, but in the 2022 legislative session Senator Craig Zucker, who represents District 14 in Montgomery County, introduced SB617 The Equivalent and Nonvisual Access Accountability Act for K-12 Education, which passed in both houses in the Maryland legislature and was subsequently signed into law by Governor Larry Hogan. It went into effect July 1, 2022, with full implementation of all provisions required by October 2024.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar, AccessComputing partner, director of the Trace R&D Center, and professor in the UMD iSchool, worked closely with disability advocacy groups—including the National Federation for the Blind of Maryland (NFB of MD)—and legislators to craft the bill and testified in support of the measure. Dr. Lazar describes the new statute as both a civil rights law and a cost savings law. First, it requires that Maryland’s school systems procure only accessible digital tools for instructional purposes, ensuring that all students including students with disabilities have equivalent access to the tools provided to advance their education. Second, the law shifts the liability risk for inaccessibility from the school systems to the vendors of digital tools by including an indemnification clause. This means that companies cannot simply claim that their technology is accessible, but instead are fully accountable for these claims, including assuming responsibility for remediation if necessary as well as any liability for inaccessibility.

As Dr. Lazar explained in his testimony before the Maryland Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee: “When a county Board of Education acquires digital technology or content and later determines that it is inaccessible, it often requires extra expenses to remediate the technology, as well as a time delay in access for students with disabilities. But, the Board of Education should have never procured the technology in the first place, if the technology was not accessible. By having formal processes in place, the cost, risk, and responsibility are transferred to the vendor, rather than the county Boards of Education.”

Foundationally, the law rests on the philosophical underpinnings of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which requires that when federal government agencies develop, procure, or maintain information and communication technology (ICT), it is accessible to people with disabilities. To facilitate this requirement, Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates, or VPATs, are created by vendors. These documents are supposed to explain how ICT products such as software, hardware, electronic content, and support documentation meet 508 Standards for IT accessibility. By tying accessibility to procurement, government entities and industry share the responsibility and commitment to ensuring equal access to ICT for all users, including users with disabilities.

The new Maryland law is part of a nationwide effort to chip away at the inaccessibility too often faced by blind students and other students with disabilities; similar laws have been passed recently in New Jersey and Illinois. Longtime advocate for the blind and former president of the NFB of MB Sharon Maneki noted that these laws are part of a long-term approach to securing rights by providing a well-defined procurement process and mechanisms for accountability to give advocates and families opportunities to see what the school systems are purchasing and whether the process as outlined in the law is working. No law is perfect, but legislation, said Maneki, as she reflected on this victory, “is the art of the possible.” Maneki also remarked on the importance of having allies like Dr. Lazar become involved in the process: “Jonathan is a big asset as an expert in accessibility who can help us look at and shape the language of the law.”

Implementation of the new Maryland law faces some challenges. Currently, knowledge of the requirements within the 24 state school systems may be limited, and to be successful districts will need to ramp up accessibility expertise within the procurement process for the interpretation of VPAT documents. Transparency is a critical component of the law; beginning in October 2023 each local school system will be required to report on the accessibility of their digital tools. These reports will be compiled and made public as well as reported to the governor and the General Assembly.

While this law represents a significant step forward for digital accessibility within Maryland’s K-12 schools, there is always room for growth. The newly passed law does not ensure that teachers and staff with disabilities encounter only accessible technology in their work; administrative systems purchased by school districts do not have to meet this requirement. Further, even for instructional digital tools, the law allows districts to purchase inaccessible tools if the tool has “pedagogical value” and there is no equivalent accessible tool. Advocates hope, however, that as the provisions are integrated into the procurement process, vendors will recognize that accessibility makes their products more competitive, as well as being the right thing to do to ensure access for all students.

Changing procurement practices is one goal, but the larger mission is educating the wider community so that elected officials, administrators, teachers, and technology vendors all view digital accessibility as a civil rights issue for students with disabilities.

AccessComputing has had a variety of digital resources released in the last few months.

Videos

• Mentoring Students with Disabilities in Research Experiences
  In this video, students with disabilities share their REU experiences and offer guidance to faculty about how they can mentor students with disabilities in research.
• Creating Accessible Documents
  Regardless of whether documents are created in Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, or another format, there are right and wrong ways to create documents in order to ensure people with disabilities can access them. This video explains why and how to create electronic documents that are accessible to all users.
• Supporting Computer Science Student Mental Health
  Long hours, lacking a sense of belonging, and fear of failure are just some stressors that affect Computer Science students and professionals alike, leading to burnout, anxiety, and depression.
• AccessADVANCE: Making STEM Departments More Inclusive of Faculty with Disabilities
  In order to be inclusive and welcoming to faculty with disabilities universities and departments need to take proactive steps. Systematically reviewing and improving campus communications, worksites, meetings, technology, events, and services to make them more accessible and inclusive to faculty members with disabilities.
• Women with Disabilities in Academic Careers
  This video profiles women faculty members with disabilities sharing their experiences and perspectives that may be helpful for other women faculty members with disabilities and for academic departments and institutions that want to improve their practices with respect to fully including this marginalized group.

Webinar Recordings

• Including Students with Disabilities in CS Education
  About 8.7 million PreK-12 students in the US have a disability and are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Act or under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. These students have a number of barriers that prevent them from participating fully in CS education. In this webinar we discuss these barriers and how they can be removed to make CS education more accessible and welcoming to these students.
• Partnering with AccessComputing to increase the participation of students with disabilities in computing at community and technical colleges
  Learn more about strategies and resources to support students with disabilities in computing programs at community and technical colleges. There are funded opportunities to support your work in this area!
• From Telecommute to Telecommunity: Pushing for institutional change
  In 2022, Disabled faculty and students are requesting accommodations to remain off campus or to limit in-person exposure through continued access to remote or hybrid delivery of instruction. Many universities are denying these requests by calling them "unreasonable burdens" to the institution or citing institutional business interests. Remote and hybrid instruction is neither an unreasonable burden (as proved by our past few semesters), nor does it interfere with the essential functions of "the position" -- instructing and learning. This webinar is a discussion of a book chapter contextualizing the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects on office-based and academic workspaces using a critical disability studies approach.
• Accessible Blocks Discussion
  Modern block languages consist of a complex series of moving parts. While they do have visualizations of the computer code, they also contain graphical editors, game editors, robotics systems, community forums, multimedia output, and many other attributes that must be accessible for students with disabilities to meaningfully and fully participate in computer science. In this webinar, we provide a summary of the state of what is and is not accessible across block languages and then foster a discussion about how we might get there.
• Integrating Accessibility and Disability into the Computing Curriculum
  In this SIGCSE-affiliated session, faculty shared about how they have integrated accessibility and disability topics into their computer science (CS) courses. There are certain courses, such as web or app design and development and human-computer interactions, that should be addressing accessibility because of the human-facing nature of software. Less obvious are courses, such as intro CS, computer vision, natural language processing, data compression, software engineering, and others, that can also have accessibility and disability content.

• DREU Information Session
  In this Zoom presentation students interested in applying for DREU for Summer 2022 receive information on the DREU process and hear from prior DREU participants.

Welcome to “AccessAdvice,” an advice column on accessibility and disability issues written by Elaine Schaertl Short, an AccessComputing co-PI. Before we start, some important disclaimers: everything I say represents only my opinion as an individual, not the opinion of any organization or funder, and I am not a lawyer or medical professional and none of the following should be construed as medical or legal advice. If you’d like to ask a question, email accesscomp@uw.edu with the subject line “AccessAdvice.”

I am about to start a faculty job search; what advice do you have for me? - Job Seeker 

Dear Job Seeker,

First of all, congratulations! Even getting to this point is a huge accomplishment: Having a Ph.D. and publication record means that a significant number of senior people in your field have certified that you have something important to contribute – not just your Ph.D. advisor, but also your committee, your postdoc advisor (if you have one), and all of the reviewers and program committee members who have recommended your work for publication. As you prepare to subject yourself to a totally new kind of judgment for what can feel like overwhelming stakes, it can be easy to lose track of how much you’ve done already. I hope you can keep a hold of that thought as you go through the search process; there are no guarantees, but the skills that have brought you to this point will carry you through to good things in the future regardless of how any (or all) of your interviews go.

From a disability perspective, I am not going to lie to you and say that faculty searches are always perfectly fair any more than anything else about the world we live in is fair; there is significant evidence that holding any marginalized identity works against you. That said, my biggest regret from my faculty search was letting ableism and sexism take root in my own head. You may find that it comes in the form of imposter syndrome; in myself, I find it is not that I lack confidence in my own abilities and more that I sometimes despair of ever receiving appropriate credit for those abilities, especially in the case of things like strong leadership and technical expertise that our society says are not characteristic of disabled women. And while these thoughts don’t come from nothing (I have stories, as so many of us do), when you go into your interviews in a mindset of anxiety, apology, or defensiveness, it not only stops you from doing your best or calmly requesting accommodations, it can start to corrode the sense of curiosity, academic freedom, and joy in doing our best work that brings us to academic careers in the first place. While it’s useful to do all the practice and preparation (and clearly in the end it worked, since I did get a faculty job), I wish that I had approached it less from the perspective of anticipating and addressing criticism and more from the perspective of letting my best skills and most interesting ideas shine.

So for your first step, my advice is to get clear for yourself on what you will bring to the table as a faculty member. There are many resources out there on what search committees are looking for; typically it’s a combination of past accomplishments (in most fields, in the form of whatever publications your field most values) and a sense of vision for the future (that will distinguish you from other faculty at the institution and your past mentors). From there, you will have a strong foundation for approaching your search as a two-way process; you are evaluating the department as much as they are evaluating you. In fact, most departments where you interview will be trying to impress you, and most candidates who make it even to the phone interview stage are well-qualified for a faculty position. From this perspective, accommodations become a much easier thing to request; you are giving the department not only the opportunity to live up to their obligations to provide a fair interviewing experience, but also the opportunity to excel in their side of the process. Because of this, while you may have to provide some guidance (which you are probably used to doing at this point in your career, unfair as it is), most departments will jump to accommodate you. In many cases, this is true even if you don’t disclose your disability (or specific condition); when you are making arrangements you can say something like “I will need stair-free routes between locations” or “I will need a 10- or 15-minute break every two hours” and it’s unlikely to be a problem.

In my own search, I explained that I use a cane and have a limited ability to walk long distances but did not specify my disability beyond that (or even that my mobility impairment is a permanent disability rather than a temporary injury). The departments where I interviewed then made sure that my interviews were all in one building (sometimes even in one room) or had someone drive me between meetings and to meals. You might request a translator, additional time between meetings, an additional break of a certain length, someone to meet you at the hotel, that meals accommodate your dietary needs, or that all venues be wheelchair accessible. Your points of contact for this will typically be your host (who is often someone you know or in your field and will be motivated for you to have a good experience) and the department administrators (who are often wonderful and know far more than the faculty about the campus). If you get to your interview and find there is an unexpected barrier (or that a promised accommodation is not available), these are also the people who will help to fix the problem (again, keep in mind that they want to make a good impression even if they don’t make you an offer). At most universities, this combination of advance requests and in-the-moment corrections will be enough to get you through your interview; at the places where this is not the case, you likely would have a miserable experience as a faculty member and you’re better off without them (although I acknowledge that this is easier to say once you have a job).

Once you make it through the interview process, you will find yourself with some number of job offers. If you have interviews but don’t receive any offers, I encourage you to give it at least one more try in the following year; hiring depends on many factors that have nothing to do with your qualifications (such as internal politics around subfields). A different department in a different year is likely to result in a different outcome. Otherwise, if you have at least one offer, you are at the point where you can negotiate. A full overview of the negotiation process is beyond the scope of this article, but as a disabled person you may want to take advantage of this as the time you have the most leverage to get things from both the department and university. While you have the right to accommodations under the ADA, it can sometimes be easier to get exactly the accommodations you want (rather than having to go through the “interactive process”) when they’re written into your startup offer. You might request extra startup funding for converting materials into accessible formats, undergraduate assistants, lab renovations to make your space accessible (for example, my lab and office both have automatic doors), additional course releases, or whatever other support you might need. If you have more than one offer, you are in a particularly strong position; I encourage you to request what you need and take whichever offer provides you with the best opportunities to succeed.

To wrap up, I would love to say that barriers never pop up and that you won’t face rude or thoughtless questions from interviewers; but sadly, it can happen even in well-intentioned departments. If this happens to you I am sorry; it’s unfair and there is a whole community of us working to fix it. I wish you the very best of luck in your search; we need your unique perspective in academia and I would be thrilled to welcome you as a colleague.

-ESS