AccessComputing News - December 2024: All Articles

We are very excited to announce that AccessComputing has received additional funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance program to continue our work to increase the participation of people with disabilities in computing. Maya Cakmak (PI), Brianna Blaser (Director), Stacy Branham (co-PI), Elaine Short (co-PI), and Raja Kushalnagar (co-PI) will continue to lead the project. Through the extension, AccessComputing will continue its work partnering with over 100 academic institutions, professional organizations, and companies to achieve this goal. The additional $5.6 million investment will support AccessComputing activities through the end of 2029. You can view the award announcement on the NSF Awards site. 

The extension will focus on four objectives:

• Individual engagement,
• Organizational capacity development and collaboration,
• Curriculum development and dissemination, and
• Alliance impact and sustainability.

The fifth extension of AccessComputing includes new activities related to pathways to research careers, making and hacking, AI, conference accessibility, and integrating accessibility into structural change efforts. 

Read more about NSF’s recent investment in the Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances.

Google’s Blockly Accessibility Fund has awarded funding to organizations that are working to develop and implement accessible block-based coding tools and resources. The University of Washington (UW) and University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) have recently received one of these awards to focus on working with Blockly developers to increase the accessibility of their tools and resources.

Created by Google, Blockly is an open-source library for the programming language JavaScript. It adds a visual code editor by using insertable blocks that represent coding concepts; this allows users to learn and apply programming principles without the complexity of syntax or the pressure of working in a traditional text-based code editor. Blockly is freely available for use in both web and mobile applications.

This project will be lead by Andreas Stefik (University of Nevada Las Vegas) and Brianna Blaser (UW), who work together on our partner program, AccessCSforAll, as well as a variety of other projects aimed at increasing accessibility in programming, especially for younger people. Their focus for Blockly will be on increasing the accessibility of their tools and resources.

AccessComputing is lucky to have an amazing network of collaborators and partners. In recent months, our community has received multiple awards recognizing their contributions to their field and funding for future projects. Join us in celebrating this list of accomplishments:

• AccessComputing co-PI Stacy Branham (University of California Irvine) received UCI's 2024 Learning Experience Design and Online Teaching Award.

• AccessComputing partner Abraham Glasser (Gallaudet) received a $4.6 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Technology Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (DHH-RERC). 

• AccessComputing partner, UW’s CREATE, received funding to lead the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on participatory, assistive, inclusive, and responsible use of AI technology, also funded by NIDILRR.

• NSF BPC Alliances and AccessComputing partners, Computing Research Association Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research, Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences, STARS Computing Corps, Computer Science for All, National Center for Women in Information Technology, Diversifying Leadership in the Professoriate, Expanding Computing Education Pathways, and Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions received continued funding. 

• AccessComputing partner JooYoung Seo (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign (UIUC) received NSF funding for the project An AudioTactile Data System for Blind or Low Vision Faculty, Staff, Postdocs, and Graduate Students in Chemistry, Math, Computer and Information Sciences.

• AccessComputing partners Devorah Kletenik (Brooklyn College) and Rachel Adler (UIUC) were authors on a paper that won Honorable Mention Best Long Paper Award at ASIS&T (Association for Information Science and Technology). The paper is titled "Accessible Adventures: Teaching Accessibility to High School Students Through Games," by Kyrie Z. Zhou, Chunyu Liu, Jingwen Shan, Devorah Kletenik, and Rachel F. Adler.

• AccessComputing partner Devorah Kletenik has two projects recently funded by the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline: "Behind the Screens: Exploring the Unseen Barriers for Students with Non-Apparent Disabilities" and "Starting with Inclusion: Adding a Focus on Accessible Design in An E-Commerce Course for Novices."

• AccessComputing partner Vivian Motti (George Mason U) received a GMU Faculty Trailblazer Award for Excellence in Inclusion.

• AccessComputing partner Daniela Marghitu (Auburn) was appointed to the Alabama Governor's Advisory Council for Computer Science Education and was reappointed as member of the College Board’s AP CS A Development Committee Members. 

• AccessComputing partner Annie Ross Bucknell and colleague Garreth Tigwell (RIT) were awarded from the NSF "Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: Creative Accessibility Design Tools for Mobile App Creators: Enhancing Inclusion through Innovative Design Methods."

• AccessComputing partner Foad Hamidi (University of Maryland Baltimore County), in collaboration with a community partner, the Digital Harbor Foundation, received a NSF grant from the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program entitled, "Space for All: Creating Accessible Technology-Rich Makerspaces and Learning Activities for Youth and Young Adults with Autism" to create three accessible makerspaces for youth and young adults with autism in Baltimore to train them in interactive computing, digital fabrication, and game design. 

• AccessComputing partner Emily Whiting (Boston University) received a Teach Access grant to incorporate a new module in her CS 480: Introduction to Computer Graphics course. 

• AccessComputing partner Tamanna Motahar (University of Washington) received the fall 2024 Allen School Postdoc Research Award for her research proposal : "Design and Fabrication of a Low-cost Robotic Arm for People with Upper Body Impairment." 

• AccessComputing partner Wing Lam (George Mason) was awarded an NSF CAREER award for a project “Enhanced Reliability and Efficiency of Software Regression Testing in the Presence of Flaky Tests.” 

• AccessComputing Team Member Ather Sharif received the University of Washington 2024 Individual Digital Accessiblity Award as a pioneer in improving digital accessibility and reducing the digital divide for people with disabilities. He created VoxLens, an open-source JavaScript plug-in that improves the accessibility of online data visualizations for screen-reader users and developed UnlockedMaps, an open-data map that visualizes the real-time elevator status of urban rail stations, along with nearby accessible restaurants and restrooms.

Please join me in congratulating our community members for their achievements. 

Since 1974, the Computing Research Association’s (CRA’s) Taulbee Survey has polled its academic members, computing departments and information schools from the United States and Canada about their faculty and students. Since 2021 they have collected departmental data about disabled students who receive accommodations authorized by their university’s disability services for students offices.

Nationally, about 8% of students receive official accommodations. In 2023, 69 out of 176 departments reported this disability data with 4.3% of undergraduate students receiving accommodations. Of the 69 that reported the data 40% reported zero students receiving disability accommodations.

In October 2024, I wrote an article for the CRA’s Computing Research News about the disability data collected over the past three years. The article also describes strategies for departments who either did not report disability data or reported zero students with accommodations to obtain this data from their university’s Office of Institutional Research (OIR). 

I encourage fellow academics to read my article and share it with your chair and faculty in your department who respond to the Taulbee survey each year. The 2024 Taulbee survey has been sent to departments with a deadline of January 24, 2025 for submission of data.

This article was originally published at The Conversation by AccessComputing Co-PI Elaine Short, assistant professor of computer science at Tufts University. Permission was given to republish on our website.

You might have heard that artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize everything, save the world and give everyone superhuman powers. Alternatively, you might have heard that it will take your job, make you lazy and stupid, and make the world a cyberpunk dystopia.

Consider another way to look at AI: as an assistive technology – something that helps you function.

With that view, also consider a community of experts in giving and receiving assistance: the disability community. Many disabled people use technology extensively, both dedicated assistive technologies such as wheelchairs and general-use technologies such as smart home devices.

Equally, many disabled people receive professional and casual assistance from other people. And, despite stereotypes to the contrary, many disabled people regularly give assistance to the disabled and nondisabled people around them.

Disabled people are well experienced in receiving and giving social and technical assistance, which makes them a valuable source of insight into how everyone might relate to AI systems in the future. This potential is a key driver for my work as a disabled person and researcher in AI and robotics.

Actively Learning to Live with Help

While virtually everyone values independence, no one is fully independent. Each of us depends on others to grow our food, care for us when we are ill, give us advice and emotional support, and help us in thousands of interconnected ways. Being disabled means having support needs that are outside what is typical and therefore those needs are much more visible. Because of this, the disability community has reckoned more explicitly with what it means to need help to live than most nondisabled people.

This disability community perspective can be invaluable in approaching new technologies that can assist both disabled and nondisabled people. You can’t substitute pretending to be disabled for the experience of actually being disabled, but accessibility can benefit everyone.

This is sometimes called the curb-cut effect after the ways that putting a ramp in a curb to help a wheelchair user access the sidewalk also benefits people with strollers, rolling suitcases and bicycles.

Partnering in Assistance

You have probably had the experience of someone trying to help you without listening to what you actually need. For example, a parent or friend might “help” you clean and instead end up hiding everything you need.

Disability advocates have long battled this type of well-meaning but intrusive assistance – for example, by putting spikes on wheelchair handles to keep people from pushing a person in a wheelchair without being asked to or advocating for services that keep the disabled person in control.

The disabled community instead offers a model of assistance as a collaborative effort. Applying this to AI can help to ensure that new AI tools support human autonomy rather than taking over.

A key goal of my lab’s work is to develop AI-powered assistive robotics that treat the user as an equal partner. We have shown that this model is not just valuable, but inevitable. For example, most people find it difficult to use a joystick to move a robot arm: The joystick can only move from front to back and side to side, but the arm can move in almost as many ways as a human arm.

To help, AI can predict what someone is planning to do with the robot and then move the robot accordingly. Previous research assumed that people would ignore this help, but we found that people quickly figured out that the system is doing something, actively worked to understand what it was doing and tried to work with the system to get it to do what they wanted.

Most AI systems don’t make this easy, but my lab’s new approaches to AI empower people to influence robot behavior. We have shown that this results in better interactions in tasks that are creative, like painting. We also have begun to investigate how people can use this control to solve problems outside the ones the robots were designed for. For example, people can use a robot that is trained to carry a cup of water to instead pour the water out to water their plants.

Training AI on Human Variability

The disability-centered perspective also raises concerns about the huge datasets that power AI. The very nature of data-driven AI is to look for common patterns. In general, the better-represented something is in the data, the better the model works.

If disability means having a body or mind outside what is typical, then disability means not being well-represented in the data. Whether it’s AI systems designed to detect cheating on exams instead detecting students’ disabilities or robots that fail to account for wheelchair users, disabled people’s interactions with AI reveal how those systems are brittle.

One of my goals as an AI researcher is to make AI more responsive and adaptable to real human variation, especially in AI systems that learn directly from interacting with people. We have developed frameworks for testing how robust those AI systems are to real human teaching and explored how robots can learn better from human teachers even when those teachers change over time.

Thinking of AI as an assistive technology, and learning from the disability community, can help to ensure that the AI systems of the future serve people’s needs – with people in the driver’s seat.

The Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing brings together computing students, faculty, and professionals for networking, mentoring, and learning. One of the things that I enjoy most about the Tapia Celebration is the chance to connect with AccessComputing community members old and new. Held September 18-21 in San Diego, this year’s Tapia Celebration allowed us the opportunity to do so. AccessComputing funded travel and participation for over 30 Team Members to attend. 

Highlights of Tapia 2024 featured these AccessComputing-sponsored events:

• Richard Ladner and I led a Birds of a Feather session titled Diversity and Disability. Participants had the opportunity to connect with others with similar interests in disability inclusion and accessibility
• A reception for AccessComputing community members that brought together AccessComputing leadership, partners, and team members
• A day-long workshop, Accessibility in Computer Science, that served as a crash course on accessibility, exposed attendees to research projects related to accessibility, and offered ways to build skills after the workshop ended

The topics of disability and accessibility continue to grow in importance at Tapia, as illustrated by the number of other disability-related seasons on the schedule, which included:

• Thursday, Sept. 19

• Fostering a Disability-Inclusive Research Culture with Dynamic Mutual Micro-Accommodations (DyMMAs)

• Dr. Shiri Dori-Hacohen, University of Connecticut

• Dr. Fabricio Murai, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

• Creating an Accessible Web Application

• Dr. Obianuju Okafor, Microsoft & University of Texas at Austin

• Friday, Sept. 20

• Empowering Designer-Developer Collaboration through Annotating for Accessibility

• Jennifer Patterson, BNY Mellon

• Neurodiversity and Inclusivity - a dialogue on EY’s approach to developing a model of support for neurodivergent candidates and employees

• Sean Baker, EY

• Cindy Lazard-Hunt, EY

• Disabled In Computing - a New Community for Faculty and Graduate Students with Disabilities

• Dr. Shiri Dori-Hacohen, University of Connecticut

• Dr. Fabricio Murai, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Mark your calendars now for Tapia 2025 to be held September 10-12, 2025 in Dallas, TX. We hope to see you there!

The biennial CRA Conference was held at the Snowbird Resort in Utah from July 23 - 25, 2024. The lead plenary speaker was Haben Girma, the first DeafBlind person to graduate from Harvard Law School and a human rights lawyer advancing disability justice. She gave a wonderful talk about her own experiences with ableism and technology. Her talk was given orally, but she answered questions by having them translated to a refreshable Braille device in real-time. Since this was the leading plenary on the first day of the conference, the room was packed with perhaps three hundred leaders in computing fields from academia, industry, organizations, and government. One highlight of her presentation was a video that she showed of herself using a smartphone app that could detect when to cross a street by letting her know when the walk sign turned from red to green. The video showed that she received wrong information about where she was crossing the street because the two streets did not meet perpendicular to each other but at less than 90 degrees. The app was picking up the crossing sign from the wrong crossing. This demonstrates some of the perils of technology for disabled people, where something goes wrong because the technology meets a situation it was not programmed to anticipate. Readers interested in learning more about Haben Girma should go to her website.

On the final day, AccessComputing organized a 90-minute session titled: Disability and Accessibility in the Age of Generative AI. Ladner gave a short talk at the beginning about disability data. It was followed by a panel that was moderated by Kushalnagar and with panelists: Cecilia Aragon, faculty member from University of Washington; Dhruv Jain, faculty member from the University of Michigan; and Cynthia Bennett, researcher from Google. The panel focused on three questions: 

1. What were some of the things that helped you on your journey to being a successful computer scientist?

2. How did you navigate around barriers you encountered during your graduate school and professional career? 

3. What advice would you give chairs and leaders about how to be more inclusive toward faculty and researchers who have disabilities? 

Coming from their own personal experiences, the moderator and panelists were able to describe their journeys to success and some of the barriers they faced in doing so. The audience of computing leaders asked questions or added comments at the end of the panel part of the session. 

Following the panel was a talk titled “Generative AI Impacts” by Kate Glazko, AccessComputing Team member and Ph.D. student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. In the talk she described two research projects that assess the ability of generative AI to answer questions well when disability is a factor. The first was about the ability of generative AI to evaluate resumes which some items in the resume are related to disability, such as winning a “disability scholarship.” She showed that generative AI used for the purpose of evaluating such resumes is discriminatory or ableist. For details see her jointly authored paper titled “Identifying and Improving Disability Bias in GPT-Based Resume Screening” that appeared in 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '24). The second was about whether generative AI can do anything well for disabled people such as image creation, summarization, data visualization, and code production. For example, generative AI code production was not able to produce accessible results even when asked to do. Naturally, some of this can improve with better generative AI, but the training data must contain enough correct “knowledge” of issues around disability and accessibility. For details see her jointly authored paper titled “An Autoethnographic Case Study of Generative Artificial Intelligence's Utility for Accessibility” that appeared in the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '23).

About 35 computing leaders attended the session. The session slides can be found on the resources tab for the CRA Conference. AccessComputing also had a table where attendees could pick up literature about its activities.

Here are some experiences of AccessComputing Team members who attended the Tapia conference this year. They talk about why they went, what they experienced, and advice for other students interested in attended.

• Sunday David Ubur: Computer Science (Human-Computer Interaction)

• Izabella Rodrigues: Human-Machine Interaction (with focuses on Accessibility and Environment)

• Ozioma "Ozzie" Oguine: Computer Science and Engineering

Why did you want to go to Tapia?

SUNDAY: In 2024, I had the privilege of attending Tapia again, this time in San Diego, California, thanks to generous support from AccessComputing. So, why Tapia? I’ve returned because Tapia is unlike any other conference. As a gathering that celebrates diversity in computing, it’s a space where I can connect with others who share my experiences and challenges: people who, like me, are navigating the field of computing with a disability, as well as those from other underrepresented backgrounds. In my daily life at Virginia Tech, it’s rare to meet other students or faculty who understand the unique perspectives and obstacles that come with being Deaf or Hard of Hearing. At Tapia, I find role models, peers, and allies who offer invaluable insights and strategies for success.

IZABELLA: I went to Tapia because I was looking to find a community of people in computing that come from marginalized and diverse backgrounds. I was really excited to meet other people from AccessComputing and also go learn about accessibility in computer science in the sessions.  

OZZIE: As a Black graduate student with a disability, building a supportive community has been invaluable to my journey. At Tapia, my aim was to expand my network by connecting with senior doctoral students, as well as academic and industry professionals who could offer guidance on my academic and career paths. Thanks to support from AccessComputing, I had the opportunity to attend the 2024 Tapia Conference in San Diego.

What were some memorable parts of Tapia?

SUNDAY: Beyond meeting people with similar experiences, Tapia provides opportunities to network with allies like the AccessComputing team, who are committed to creating pathways for students like me. Through them and others, I’ve learned about resources for applying to graduate programs, finding internships, securing jobs after graduation, and accessing mentorship and funding to attend events like this. The connections I’ve made at Tapia give me confidence in my future in computing, knowing I have a strong support network to lean on.

Tapia has something to offer every student. For some, it’s about building a professional network; for others, it’s about transitioning from undergraduate studies to funded graduate programs. And for many, it’s a chance to explore internship and job opportunities at the Career Fair, where industries and universities come together to recruit.

IZABELLA: I would say the experience of Tapia was overall positive. It was a little bit challenging to figure out how to navigate a career fair for the first time and I was really nervous because I didn’t know a single person at Tapia. It was far out of my comfort zone, but in the end I made strong connections and met some amazing people. 

OZZIE: Attending Tapia was an unforgettable experience, especially as it marked my first visit to California. The Town and Country Resort was a fantastic venue with a great accessible environment, which made it easy to navigate on my mobility scooter. At the conference, I reconnected with friends from previous conferences, attended inspiring keynotes, and enjoyed engaging lightning talks. The Tapia Student Poster sessions showcased innovative research by fellow students, and I was able to explore new ideas and approaches. I also attended the renowned career fair, where I connected with tech recruiters, explored potential opportunities, and received helpful feedback on my resume. Beyond the conference, highlights included relaxing at San Diego's beaches, trying local cuisine, and unwinding at the evening fireside gatherings with other attendees.

What advice would you give to students thinking about going to Tapia?

SUNDAY: If you’re considering attending Tapia, I encourage you to think about your goals ahead of time. Are you there to build your network? If so, identify the people and organizations you want to connect with to make the most of your time. Are you interested in graduate school? Plan to speak with university representatives and attend their sessions. Or, if your focus is on landing an internship or job, make sure to prepare your resume and brush up on your interviewing skills, and elevator pitch, before visiting the Career Fair.

Tapia is more than just a conference; it’s a supportive community where you’ll find mentors and peers who understand your journey and can help you navigate the challenges ahead. It’s a place to discover that, no matter the obstacles, you’re not alone on this path. 

IZABELLA: I would recommend to other students thinking about attending Tapia to do research about the companies and schools going to the career fair and make lists of things you want to learn more about and people you want to meet. Print out that list and check things off as you accomplish them. I think it was helpful to have a pitch of what I was going to say to people before I met them. Also come with an open mind; you never know what opportunities might present themselves! Try to be as social as possible and take the most advantage of your opportunity of being there. This might mean you should think about reserving energy before and after the conference by making time in your schedule for self care.

OZZIE: If you’re a computing student from an underrepresented background considering attending Tapia, I highly recommend it. This conference is much more than a place to learn; it’s an invaluable opportunity to connect with a diverse and supportive community that understands and values your experiences. Beyond the professional benefits, Tapia provides an inclusive environment where you can build meaningful friendships, share your journey, and find support from others who understand the unique challenges you face. Whether you’re looking for guidance, mentorship, or simply a sense of belonging, the Tapia Conference is an exceptional place to find it. I hope to see you at future conferences!