AccessComputing News - January 2014: All Articles

AccessComputing has just launched a redesigned website with a new look and feel as well as new navigation, search capability, content, and features.

The new Choose Computing

(www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/resources/why-choose-computing) area encourages high school students with disabilities to pursue computing and IT careers. There you’ll find profiles of successful computing students and professionals who happen to have disabilities, resources to learn more about careers in computing, and examples of computing projects. 

With the new website, we’ve also launched our AccessComputing Replication Packages (www.uw.edu/accesscomputing/get-involved/educators-employers/replication-packages). These packages provide everything that educators or professionals need to replicate activities that have been successful at working towards AccessComputing’s goals of increasing the participation of individuals with disabilities. In addition, there is new improved searching capability in the Knowledge Base

(www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/knowledge-base).

Check it all out at www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/.

My name is Daniel Mooney, and I am currently a fourth-year (senior) student at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), in Rochester, New York. My major is information technology with an emphasis on mobile and web applications. I anticipate graduating this May. Following my graduation, I will be working as a technology analyst for Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Global Technology and Operations Division.

I chose RIT due to its strong emphasis in technology, job placement, and services for the deaf. I attended AccessComputing’s Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing in 2011 and, through the Summer Academy, became very interested in web applications. Following that summer, I became a student tutor for the National Technical Institute for the Deaf computer lab for deaf and hard of hearing computer science students. The lab supervisor, Mark Wambach, hired me in the summer of 2012 as the developer for a web application that analyzed self-submitted student hours versus grade achievement. Through the summer work experience, I learned how to manage my own projects and focused my career interest towards web development.

For my last co-op in summer 2013, I was looking for an internship at a major corporation so that I could experience working within a business setting. I applied through the Emerging Leaders program at the National Business & Disability Council and was rewarded with an internship analyst position with Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Global Technology and Operations Division. My duties were to facilitate syncing data on municipal bond rates across many different type of databases, manage the data so the queries could be performed at optimized capacity, and educate my team on the intricacies of Python’s memory management. Following the internship, I landed a full-time offer which I have since accepted.

In the fall of 2013, I went back to RIT to complete my senior year and further my unique interest in developing applications for business and information systems. I also joined MotionSavvy, a technology start-up concentrating on capturing sign-language through 3-D recognition hardware and software. As my career will begin in the financial service technology industry, I have expanded my interests to other types of web-based businesses.

An instructor works with a student on her laptop.

The Accessing Higher Ground conference, held annually in November, focuses on accessible media, web, and technology in higher education. It attracts about 300 attendees, most of whom play key roles in assuring their college or university’s programs, services, and resources are accessible to students with disabilities, especially when delivered using technology.

In 2013, the theme of the conference was “universal design in curriculum.” Universal design is the practice of designing something —a building, website, device, product, or lesson plan —with a full spectrum of users in mind. This increases the likelihood that people with a wide variety of characteristics (e.g., variations in vision, hearing, use of hands, height, mobility, language, culture) will be able to use the product.

“Universal design in curriculum” is distinct from “universal design of curriculum.” The former is concerned with teaching principles of universal design by injecting related content into course curricula; the latter ensures course content is fully accessible to students with a wide variety of characteristics, including various disabilities and learning styles.

It is important for curricula to be accessible to all learners, but it also important to teach principles of universal design because today’s students are the architects of our future world. If they are exposed to universal design and accessibility related concepts, it increases the likelihood that the world they create will be one in which all people can equally participate. This has been an area of focus for AccessComputing, so naturally program staff and partners were active participants at the conference.

In an all-day preconference session, I was joined by several colleagues in facilitating a pre-conference workshop titled “Integrating Universal Design into the University Curriculum.” Each of the facilitators delivered a presentation exploring the topic from slightly different perspectives, then spent much of the afternoon engaged in discussion with participants about issues and solutions.

AccessComputing partner Jonathan Lazar of Towson University kicked off the day with a lively introduction to the topic and offered specific recommendations for how one might integrate accessibility related content into specific courses, including human-computer interaction, web design, systems analysis and design, and software engineering. He also encouraged participants to reach out to other disciplines including instructional technology, special education, design, engineering, speech pathology, occupational therapy, and many more. If universal design is successfully integrated into courses across multiple disciplines, students’ understanding of this content will be reinforced and students will be more likely to apply this understanding in their future careers.

Dr. Lazar also stressed the importance of building universal design into standard curriculum models such as those coordinated by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Association for Information Systems (AIS), and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Most of the current curriculum models have little or no content related to universal design or accessibility. There is an urgent need for faculty members and others who are involved in these organizations to help address this gap.

The University of Dundee provides a positive example of one institution that has successfully integrated universal design (or “inclusive design,” as it’s known in Scotland) into computing courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. David Sloan, formerly with the University of Dundee but now with The Paciello Group, shared some of the sample curricula, learning activities, and assessment strategies that comprise “The Dundee Approach.”

E.A. Draffan of the University of Southampton shared her experiences involving a full course on assistive technology and universal design that is taught to students who are pursuing a master of science degree in web technology. Up to fifty students each year take the course, and there are many success stories. Students’ ideas and projects have led to actual products and services that increase access for individuals with disabilities, and many of the students have gone on to pursue PhDs researching accessibility and universal design.

In my presentation, I described the web design and development course curriculum recently updated and maintained by AccessComputing. The curriculum was primarily designed for use in secondary schools, but has been used in a wide range of settings from middle school through universities. It is a full course curriculum in which conforming to web standards and accessible design are taught as core design principles in the first unit, then reinforced throughout the course as students learn new topics. The curriculum is available for free at www.uw.edu/accesscomputing/webd2 and currently has over 4000 registered teachers worldwide. Many of the teachers who use it have disclosed that they’re relatively new to web design, so they are learning web design at the same time they’re teaching it. Since universal design is integrated into the course, they’re learning the proper way to create web pages and passing that on to their students.

Howard Kramer of University of Colorado at Boulder is the organizer of Accessing Higher Ground, and he joined the pre-conference session to talk about a grant he received from the National Endowment for the Arts to promote the integration of universal design into university curricula. This project is young, but ultimately will host a clearinghouse of syllabi and course components that address universal design, plus other resources that faculty and others can share. The project website (still under construction at the time of this writing) is at www.uduc.org.

And all that was only the pre-conference session! Each of the facilitators went on to give breakout sessions during the regular conference and were joined by several other presenters who shared their ideas and experiences. David Sloan expanded on The Dundee Approach during the first keynote luncheon, and E.A. Draffan and I participated in a panel discussion during the second keynote luncheon.

A web page documenting ideas and sharing resources from the pre-conference session can be found at www.staff.washington.edu/tft/talks/ahg13/ud. The full Universal Design Track and Schedule is documented on the conference website at www.accessinghigherground.org/UDTrack2013.html.

What do you get when you combine 30 deaf and hard of hearing high school students, a half-dozen challenging STEM topics, and GoPro cameras? A weekend of STEM exploration and creativity!

Twice a year the Educational Resource Center on Deafness (ERCOD) at Texas School for the Deaf in Austin, Texas invites deaf and hard of hearing students from all over Texas to come together for a weekend of exploration in collaboration with deaf and hard of hearing professionals. This past November, a group of eleventh and twelfth graders spent the weekend exploring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) topics such as encryption, binary search, sound visualization, and robotics, and then creating a short video explaining their topic.

Austin Andrews and Jeremy Weston, creators of the KnowThat?! ASL video series, introduced the students to the concept of using various constraints to enhance their creativity. Time, equipment, and computer resources were limited for this project but these constraints did not limit the boundaries for their creativity.

The goal for the weekend was to produce a four-minute video explaining their STEM topic that could be understood by the general public without audio or any knowledge of sign language. Bradley Gantt, a deaf professional videographer, guided the students through the fundamentals of developing, shooting, and editing a short video with help from a number of other deaf professionals. Each group of five students was assigned a different STEM topic, and an adult group leader helped the students explore the topic and develop the video.

The STEM topics were new and unfamiliar ground for most of the students but with teamwork and guidance they welcomed the challenges. They learned the basics of encryption, binary searches, and programming robots and developed videos explaining their newfound knowledge. By Sunday morning all the groups had their videos ready to post online and share with the world.

The students packed a lot of learning, hard work, and fun into one weekend. As one student commented: I enjoyed the process of working together as a team; we all had our responsibilities, such as researching, filming, editing and managing the team.

See what a group of teens can accomplish on a weekend when you give them some new toys and a dash of inspiration —check out their videos here.

The fifteenth ACM SIGACCESS International Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2013) was held October 21–23, 2013 in Bellevue, Washington, just across Lake Washington from Seattle. The ASSETS conference is a major forum for research in the design, evaluation, and use of computing and information technologies to benefit people with disabilities and older adults.

More than 160 people attended the conference. There were twenty-seven papers, forty posters, and eight demonstrations that were accepted to the conference by a rigorous peer review. Of particular interest were two new events at the conference: experience reports and a user experience panel. The two experience reports were about first-hand experiences by users of technologies intended for them. The user experience panel consisted of three non-researcher individuals with disabilities who were asked about their experiences with technology and what they would like to see in the future.

At least twelve people with disabilities attended the conference, half of them graduate students, and many of them speakers. Sign language interpretation was available throughout the conference and some limited captioning was also available. The hotel in Bellevue was chosen in part because of its accessibility features. It was great to see technical talks by several current and past AccessComputing team members. The next ASSETS conference will be in Rochester, New York, October 20–23, 2014.

ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is the world’s largest organization dedicated to the study of how humans interact with interactive technologies. Since 2011, the SIGCHI Executive Committee has been discussing ways to become more inclusive of researchers and practitioners with disabilities. Two complementary forces have driven this initiative: members of the SIGCHI Executive Committee recognized that the SIGCHI community could be more inclusive of practitioners and researchers with disabilities and that improvements were possible, and a number of SIGCHI community members with disabilities began documenting and actively sharing areas where improvements could be made.

Some first steps have been made to address accessibility issues. In consultation with AccessComputing and with ACM SIGACCESS, two general categories of accessibility consideration emerged as key, but separate, issues. The first is digital accessibility (relating to websites and digital resources). The second is physical accessibility (relating to conference locations, hotels, and giving presentations).

Preliminary steps have been taken to improve accessibility of both digital accessibility and physical accessibility for all SIGCHI-related conferences and to create channels of communication between SIGCHI members and non-SIGCHI interested parties (e.g., conference attendees, researchers and practitioners in related fields).

Three concrete steps have been taken to facilitate communication, raise awareness of issues and increase informed representation and advocacy of inclusive practices: (1) before SIGCHI’s flagship conference in 2013, the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, better known as “CHI”, a new email alias was created, focused specifically on reporting problems related to accessibility at the conference (sigchi-accessibility@listserv.acm.org). This email list was announced online through our email distribution lists and introduced at the Town Hall meeting at the conference itself; (2) questions related to accessibility experience at the CHI 2013 conference were added to the post-conference survey; and (3) the CHI 2014 conference chairs have created two new positions on the conference committee to represent the two key accessibility areas identified: digital accessibility chair and physical accessibility chair.

In addition to communication and representation, action has been taken. With regard to digital access, the digital accessibility chair has focused on the accessibility of the CHI 2014 web site, the CHI 2014 mobile app, and the formatting of digital library submissions (CHI papers). AccessComputing staff has been centrally involved in these efforts.

With regard to physical access, CHI 2014 online submission forms have been modified to explicitly request that authors of accepted papers and notes indicate whether presenters attending the conference will need any type of disability related accommodations. Further, in conducting site selection, SIGACCESS-developed checklists for assessing conference and hotel facilities were adopted by the SIGCHI Conference Management Committee.

While improving the inclusiveness of SIGCHI is a long-term goal, AccessComputing has worked with SIGCHI to make progress towards that goal.