CREATE Newsfeed

GazePointAR makes sense of spoken questions through eye gaze, gestures and past conversations

May 31, 2024

“What’s over there?” “How do I solve this math problem?”

If you try asking a voice assistant (VA) like Siri or Alexa such questions you won’t get much information. While VAs are transforming human-computer interaction, they can’t see what you’re looking at or where you’re pointing. CREATE Ph.D. student Jaewook Lee has led an evaluation of GazePointAR, a fully-functional, context-aware VA for wearable augmented reality (AR) that uses eye gaze, pointing gestures, and conversation history to make sense of spoken questions. 

Lee, along with advisor Jon E. Froehlich and fellow researchers, evaluated GazePointAR by comparing it to two commercial systems. The team also studied GazePointAR’s pronoun handling across three assigned tasks and its responses to participants’ own questions. In short, participants appreciated the naturalness and human-like nature of pronoun-driven queries, although sometimes pronoun use was counter-intuitive.

Lee presented the team’s paper, GazePointAR: A Context-Aware Multimodal Voice Assistant for Pronoun Disambiguation in Wearable Augmented Reality, at CHI ‘24, sharing a first-person diary study illustrating how GazePointAR performs in the wild. The paper, whose authors also include Jun Wang, Elizabeth Brown, Liam Chu, and Sebastian S. Rodriguez, enumerate limitations and design considerations for future context-aware VAs.

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Taskar project helps pedestrians find accessible routes all over Washington state

April 9, 2025

AccessMap is an app and a collection of data sets that let pedestrians tailor routes for their accessibility needs and preferences. Coverage has been spreading across Washington state and now includes a new data set, called OS-CONNECT, for sidewalks and other paths statewide, from Forks on the Olympic Peninsula to Clarkston in the southeast.

AccessMap was created in the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology (TCAT), which is led by CREATE associate director Anat Caspi. When it was launched in 2017, data was limited to parts of Seattle. Over the years, it has expanded to other cities near the Salish Sea, including Everett, Mount Vernon and Bellingham.

“Not only are we including all sidewalks in Washington, which is huge, but we are engaging communities and planners in a massive effort to support data production and the maintenance of this resource long term, to make it sustainable and translatable to other institutions. This way states across the U.S. could start using it.”

Anat Caspi, Director, Taskar Center and a CREATE associate director

The Washington State Legislature (in House Bill 1125) assigned TCAT to build the OS-CONNECT data set, which the team completed well ahead of its projected 2027 goal. The team will now perform deep quality checks, work with the different communities to analyze and interpret what the data means to them, and engage citizens in actions that promote public participation in data and active transportation. 

Interactive map of Washington state. Mapped cities and towns are outlined in grey.

The same map, zoomed in to the Olympic Peninsula, east to Bellevue. The legend is open to show meaning of different route colors.

The Taskar Center launched OS-Connect at its annual OpenThePaths conference in March. The conference brings together community members, advocates, planners, researchers and policymakers dedicated to expanding and sustaining pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.

“No state has before used machine learning and human vetting to collect, in a consistent, standardized way, all of the pedestrian infrastructure in that state,” said Caspi, a research principal in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, where TCAT is housed. “OS-CONNECT helps us answer the original question the state asked: ‘Who has access to frequent transit?’ And now we can answer many other questions, such as: ‘What type of access do people with diverse needs have to important services like grocery stores, schools and health care?’”

The state compiled OS-CONNECT using TCAT’s OpenSidewalks model, which combines machine learning with human vetting to catalogue pedestrian infrastructure. For instance, using the data set through the AccessMap app, a person using a wheelchair can plan a route only on streets that have sidewalks, don’t have an incline of greater than 5% and have curb ramps for any intersections.

The data can help local governments identify where sidewalks are in poor condition or missing. OS-CONNECT supports Walkshed, an accessibility app for urban planners, and  projects such as Complete Streets, a model for equitable infrastructure design, and Vision Zero, a Seattle project to end traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030.

This article was excerpted from the UW News article by Stefan Milne. For more information, contact Caspi at uwtcat@uw.edu.

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Students: Apply for HuskyADAPT Leadership Positions

April 7, 2025

CREATE students are encouraged to join the HuskyADAPT leadership team through a variety of student chair positions. Applications are being accepted through Friday, April 18.

Being on the leadership team involves approximately 5 hours per week of commitment, though this may vary based on your role and upcoming events. The HuskyADAPT chairs are the student leaders who plan and facilitate all HuskyADAPT events, as demonstrated at the Spring Community Meeting.

Why get involved?

HuskyADAPT is a student organization, supported by CREATE, that collaborates with individuals with disabilities and community partners on design projects. They provide adapted toys and devices for free to the local community, create low-tech adaptive technologies such as adapted books and low-cost switches, and offer education on accessible design on campus and in the community.

Skill Development: Gain hands-on experience in accessible design, project management, mentoring, and community outreach.

Networking: Connect with professionals, community partners, and fellow students passionate about accessibility.

Leadership Experience: Enhance your leadership skills by taking on roles such as toy donation chair, student executive chair, or outreach chair, which are well-suited to graduate student schedules and responsibilities.

As a current CREATE Ph.D. student and long-time HuskyADAPT leader, I appreciate the opportunity to be involved in the local disability community AND teach others about accessibility. As someone who does research with a lot of local families and young children, I always share HuskyADAPT as a resource to them as well.

Mia Hoffman

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"Dude, what am I gonna do with a touchscreen? It's crazy. I can't feel anything."

March 26, 2025

When mobile phones with flat touchscreens started becoming pervasive, it wasn’t clear exactly how people who were blind or low vision would use these devices. Research led by CREATE associate director Jacob O. Wobbrock may have influenced the direction that major technology companies like Apple and Google took to address this issue.

The iPhone 1 with a touchscreen — but no accessibility features for people who were blind — was released in September 2007. A few years later, Tim Paulding, who is blind, ran his fingers across the smooth glass screen of an iPod Touch for the first time. He was working as a counselor at a summer camp for blind kids outside Grand Rapids, Michigan, when a friend handed him the then top-of-the-line iPod.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, what am I gonna do with a touchscreen?’ It's crazy. I can't feel anything,” said Paulding.

Paulding was familiar with Symbian and Windows mobile phones, which featured keyboards with raised buttons. “I loved them — I could type so fast on those keyboards,” he said.

Then his friend showed him an innovation on the new device. “You drag your finger around and it reads what’s under your finger,” Paulding said. “I just thought it was really amazing. Now, I use something like that every day.”

Today, iPhones and Android phones come standard with these built-in touch-based screen readers. The screen reader helps people who are blind or visually impaired use the devices by reading aloud the text that appears on the screen and allowing gestures to interact with the app. Apple’s version is called VoiceOver and Android’s is called TalkBack.

“It’s rare for academic projects to have quite this line of sight from their academic origins to widespread industry adoption. This is about as close of a case that ever happens.”

Jacob O. Wobbrock, founding Co-Director of CREATE; professor in the UW iSchool

Slide Rule research: early influencer of ubiquitous touch screen technology?

On Wobbrock's team, Shaun Kane ― then an iSchool Ph.D. student and now a Google Research scientist and a CREATE Advisory Board member ― and Jeffrey Bigham, CSE Ph.D. ’09, developed one of the first touch-based screen readers, called Slide Rule, in 2007. 

“The iPhone really sparked a conversation about what mobile devices should be like and what are good ways to interact with them,” Kane said. “These smartphones were attractive devices. They were fun. People were excited about them. They certainly had a coolness about them.

Kane has a disability that limits movement with his hand. When he started on Slide Rule, he didn’t know anyone who was blind, but felt his research was “disability agnostic.”

When the iPhone arrived, Kane ruminated on how to overcome its accessibility issues. Then, he started talking to people. “I was really motivated by this as a problem where there isn't an obvious solution,” said Kane, who now works at Google Research.

His idea was to create an app on the iPhone that visually impaired users could open that would read information on the screen and allow the user to interact with the information with a series of gestures. 

Wobbrock encouraged Kane to work on this idea. Apple initially didn’t allow third-party programmers to create apps for the iPhone. In 2007, Kane figured out how to do it within a couple of months.

“Shaun Kane, brilliant as he is, found a way to essentially jailbreak the phone,” said Wobbrock, joking that doing so voided the warranty.

Most of the people with whom Kane discussed the issue felt he was taking the wrong approach. Some felt that an attachment with buttons would be the correct course. Others argued that they needed to convince Apple to produce a version of the iPhone with tactile buttons.

“Well, it's much easier to change software than it is to convince people to change hardware, right?” Kane said.

A couple of months later, Kane, Wobbrock and Bigham developed Slide Rule, a screen reader that contained an email app, a music player, and a contact list.

Kane is proud of the approach of Slide Rule and learned a valuable lesson from the project, something he’s relied on ever since. If someone downplays your idea, keep going until you decide for yourself whether the idea would work. 

“It's definitely a project that I am known for,” Kane said. “Often, people will say, ‘Oh, we read this paper in class.’ That’s really nice.”

Kane posted a video of the Slide Rule project on YouTube on May 14, 2008. Kane, Wobbrock and Bigham’s paper on their project, Slide Rule: Making mobile touch screens accessible to blind people using multi-touch interaction, was published in October 2008. 

"Keep going until you decide for yourself whether the idea will work."

~Shaun Kane

VoiceOver and TalkBack come online

Apple introduced VoiceOver for the first time in June 2009 on the iPhone 3GS. Wobbrock said he and Kane looked at VoiceOver soon after it was released.

“The resemblance to Slide Rule was striking in terms of the gestures and design,” Wobbrock said. “Of course, VoiceOver was a full-fledged industry product. It had features, preferences and polish that you have as a commercial product that a research project doesn't.”

Wobbrock learned that Apple engineers were familiar with his team’s work. The reason? An email from an Apple engineer.

The engineer wrote to Bigham’s advisor — and CREATE's Director for Education Emeritus — Richard Ladner: “We definitely read through the existing literature before starting. I can say we were certainly aware of this project. We were quite excited to see the [Slide Rule] video when it popped up.” Ladner has kept the identity of the engineer anonymous all these years.

Did Slide Rule influence VoiceOver and TalkBack? Or was it great minds think alike? Kane shies away from that debate.

“You should ask other people about that,” Kane said. “I stay out of that, because I’ve heard differing accounts. I think as soon as you see a device that’s transformative in this way, with a new kind of interface, we can all start to see what the accessibility problems might be.”

A 2019 Impact Award

In 2019, the Slide Rule research team won the SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award, which honors a paper at least 10 years old that has had significant impact on information technology that addresses the needs of people with disabilities. 

Kathleen McCoy was the chairperson of the committee that selected the iSchool paper for the award. She said, at the time the award was given, it was perhaps the most influential ASSETS paper ever published. She still uses the paper in her own classes to teach how to write about accessibility. 

“It's a beautiful paper for the field of human-computer interaction and accessibility, going all the way from a formative study of what would you want to do with this phone for people who are blind to having ideas of how to fix that,” McCoy said.

Was Apple influenced by the iSchool’s research? She points to the timeline of when the iSchool team posted its video and published its paper the year before Apple first released VoiceOver on the iPhone.

“Just that it had the same features, the same gestures, I think that’s pretty good evidence that there was some influence going on,” McCoy said. 

She thinks the iSchool research made a lasting difference in the lives of people who are blind. She called it a snowball effect, allowing iPhone users to access other apps that enable even more accessibility.

“What would the world have looked like if someone hadn’t figured this out?” McCoy said. 

From first swipe to empowered independence

For his part, Paulding, whose life changed with touch-based screen readers, recently listened to the Slide Rule video that Kane posted in 2008. 

“It sounded like a screen reader on an iPhone to me,” Paulding said.

Paulding was born with a condition called congenital rubella syndrome after his mother was exposed to German measles when she was pregnant with him. He has no right eye and lost vision in his left eye when he was about 30.

Paulding has taught other people with visual disabilities how to use VoiceOver. Based in Spokane, Paulding works as an orientation and mobility specialist at nonprofit, and CREATE Community Partner, Lighthouse for the Blind.

Technology is near the top of the list, if not the top, for helping people with visual disabilities live an independent life, he said. 

“What Apple has done with accessibility has really revolutionized what you can do as a person who's blind using a smartphone,” Paulding said.

He points to apps that have improved accessibility. Soundscape offers people who are blind or visually limited information about nearby businesses or the street grid. An app called OKO – AI Copilot for the Blind can be used at intersections without an audible pedestrian signal to tell whether the signal says “Walk” or “Don’t Walk.” 

Mainstream apps such as Google Maps and Apple Maps help guide people who are blind or low-vision through neighborhoods.

“The power of being able to have apps that do things for you, that read things for you, where you can get information and knowledge, that kind of power promotes independence in a huge way,” Paulding said. “It’s massive.”

This article was excerpted from the UW iSchool article by Jim Davis.

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Kim Ingraham — engineering assistive robotic devices for people with disabilities

March 25, 2025

CREATE faculty member Kim Ingraham designs personalized, adaptive control strategies for assistive robotic devices, such as exoskeletons and powered wheelchairs for people with disabilities. Her work aims to optimize and customize the technologies by making sure humans are in the device control and feedback loop.

“Historically we have studied the way humans naturally move and then we have built robots that can mimic that movement," says Ingraham, an assistant professor in the UW's Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) department. "But when the human is wearing the robot and they’re both in the control loop at the same time, we have to figure out ways for those systems to successfully interact. Understanding and designing for the complexity of the interactions is one of the big gaps that we still have to address,” Ingraham says.

To help close these sorts of knowledge gaps, better understand how robotic assistance impacts human motion and, ultimately, to design better device controllers, Ingraham also works with augmentative devices, such as exoskeletons for non-disabled people. Ingraham co-authored a paper in the journal Nature (September 2024) that explores over a decade of scientific research in the field and draws from her doctoral research estimating energy cost using wearable sensors and including human preference as an evaluation metric for assistive robots.

Long, and continuing, collaboration with CREATE

From 2021 to 2023 and before she joined the ECE faculty, Ingraham was a CREATE postdoctoral fellow, mentored by CREATE associate directors Katherine M. Steele (Mechanical Engineering) and Heather Feldner (Rehabilitation Medicine).

Ingraham continues to work with Feldner, studying how early access to powered mobility devices impacts development, language, and movement in young children. And she is a core faculty member in Steele's Amplifying Movement & Performance Lab that designs adaptive algorithms for exoskeletons.

As director of the Ingraham Lab, Ingraham mentors CREATE students, currently working with CREATE Ph.D. students Annika Pfister and Siena Villancio-Wolter, both in ECE.

“From a scientific perspective, I’m really interested in understanding how humans and wearable robots co-adapt to each other,” Ingraham said. “From a human point of view, I would really like to achieve the translation of our research into robotic systems that help people in meaningful ways — systems that can be adapted, personalized, and give people more choices in how they move around the world.”

This article was excerpted from a December 2024 ECE News article by Wayne Gillam.

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Community Partner Spotlight: Disability Empowerment Center

March 24, 2025

The Disability Empowerment Center is a nonprofit organization run by people with disabilities and rooted in the philosophy that people with disabilities should have the choice to live independently and thrive as important members of our community.

DEC provides King County residents with free individualized services such as skills training for independent living, peer support groups, and resources and referrals to a network of partner agencies. You can support DEC in return: check out the DEC calendar, including webinars on understanding ableism.

A CREATE Community Partner since 2022, DEC provides ongoing support for our grant efforts, shares valuable feedback through stakeholder and advisory committee participation, and is a strong community connection for CREATE's students and research projects.

Last month, DEC’s executive director Kimberly Meck spoke at a CREATE Coffee Chat on community-engaged research. She shared advice for working with communities – tailor communications to the audience, recognize they may have multiple disabilities, and engage deeply.

When asked what’s new and exciting at DEC, Meck described their new Laptop Library. “Our participants with disabilities can borrow one of our devices (or use one on-site) to do email, fill out online applications, apply for services, register to vote, and so much more.”

Meck also noted that DEC’s peer group programs have increased in number and scope, now happening in three locations throughout King County. These meet-ups are led by people with disabilities for people with disabilities to connect in a comfortable, empowering setting.

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Student Minigrant Story: Assistive-Feeding Robot Tested in the Real World

March 17, 2025

A team of UW researchers has been working on increasing the accuracy and the finer social aspects of an assistive-feeding robot. ADA, for Assistive Dexterous Arm, consists of a robotic arm that can be affixed to a power wheelchair or other sturdy furniture and controlled by the user. Through a web app, the user decides what bite they want. To feed the person that bite, the system uses a camera to distinguish between foods on the plate, a sensor to apply the correct force, and facial recognition for aim.

"Our past studies have been in the lab because, if you want to evaluate specific system components in isolation, you need to control all other aspects of the meal, But that doesn’t capture the diverse meal contexts that exist outside the lab," said Nanavati.

At the end of the day, the goal is to enable people to feed themselves in real environments, so we should also evaluate the system in those environments.

Lead author, CREATE Ph.D. student Amal Nanavati

Nanavati is the lead author and Ko a co-author of a paper, Lessons Learned from Designing and Evaluating a Robot-Assisted Feeding System for Out-of-Lab Use, presented this year at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. The presentation includes a video highlighting the findings and challenges.

ACM/IEEE video: findings and challenges

ACM/IEEE HRI conference presentation video showing Ko using the assistive feeding robot in his home and sharing his perspective and experience. Nanavati discusses the purpose of the project and the out-of-lab study.

OPB conversation with Ko and Nanavati

Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud radio program interviewed Nanavati and Ko on their collaboration. Ko explains what it's like to have a bit more autonomy. Nanavati shares the complexity of designing the system.

Nanavati is co-advised by CREATE faculty Maya Cakmak and Siddhartha S. Srinivasa, founder of the Personal Robotics Lab that houses the research; both are senior authors on the paper.

A decade of research

Through about ten years of research, the assistive-feeding robot has graduated from feeding users fruit salads to full meals composed of nearly anything that can be picked up with a fork. Researchers also investigated how the robot can enhance the social aspects of dining.

The scope of the research has included CREATE Ph.D. graduate Ethan K. Gordon; Tyler Schrenk, the late president of the Tyler Schrenk Foundation and another community researcher; and Vy Nguyen, an occupational therapy clinical research lead at Hello Robot. Many more co-authors are listed in the paper.

This article includes excerpts from a UW News article and Amal Nanavati's research website.

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CHI 2025: CREATE Papers and Presentations

March 24, 2025

Papers, presentations, and workshops from CREATE researchers at CHI 2025, the ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. We appreciate your patience as we continue to update this page.

The conference takes place April 26 - May 1 in Yokohama Japan.

Awards and honors

Congratulations to these 2025 ACM SIGCHI honorees:

• James Fogarty, a CREATE associate director, elected to the ACM SIGCHI Academy Class of 2025.
• Cecilia Aragon, a new CREATE faculty member, received a SIGCHI Special Recognition for "establishing human-centered data science as a new field bridging HCI and data science, demonstrating its impact through applications from astrophysics to energy systems."
• UW colleagues Kate Starbird (elected to the SIGCHI Academy); Nadya Peek (Special Recognition); Alexis Hiniker (Societal Impact Award).

Papers

A Stakeholder Value Framework for Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Annuska Zolyomi (CREATE faculty), Varsha Koushik, Dinara Asyet, Linh H. Huynh.

"A Tool for Freedom": Co-Designing Mobility Aid Improvements Using Personal Fabrication and Physical Interface Modules With Primarily Young Adults

Jerry Cao (CREATE Ph.D. student), Krish Jain, Julie Zhang, Yuecheng Peng, Shwetak N Patel, Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director).

Accessibility for Whom? Perceptions of Mobility Barriers Across Disability Groups and Implications for Designing Personalized Maps

Chu Li (CREATE Ph.D. student), Rock Yuren Pang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Delphine Labbé, Yochai Eisenberg, Maryam Hosseini, Jon E. Froehlich (CREATE associate director).

Autoethnographic Insights from Neurodivergent GAI "Power Users"

Kate S. Glazko (CREATE Ph.D. student), JunHyeok Cha, Aaleyah Lewis (CREATE Ph.D. student), Ben Kosa, Brianna L. Wimer, Andrew Zheng, Roy Zheng, Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director).

Cultivating Computational Thinking and Social Play Among Neurodiverse Preschoolers in Inclusive Classrooms

Maitraye Das (former CREATE postdoc), Megan Tran, Amanda Chih-han Ong, Julie A Kientz (CREATE faculty), Heather Feldner (CREATE associate director).

Deploying and Examining Beacon for At-Home Patient Self-Monitoring With Critical Flicker Frequency

Richard Li (CREATE Ph.D. student), Philip Vutien; Sabrina Omer, Michael Yacoub, George Ioannou, Ravi Karkar, Sean A Munson, James Fogarty (CREATE associate director).

Exploring AI-Based Support in Speech-Language Pathology for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children

Aaleyah Lewis (CREATE Ph.D. student), Aayushi Dangol; Hyewon Suh; Abbie Olszewski; James Fogarty (CREATE associate director); Julie A. Kientz (CREATE faculty).

Exploring Reduced Feature Sets for American Sign Language Dictionaries

Ben Kosa, Aashaka Desai (CREATE Ph.D. student), Alex X Lu, Richard E Ladner (CREATE Director for Education Emeritus), Danielle Bragg.

"I want to think like an SLP": A Design Exploration of AI-Supported Home Practice in Speech Therapy

Aayushi Dangol, Aaleyah Lewis (CREATE Ph.D. student), Hyewon Suh, Xuesi Hong, Hedda Meadan, James Fogarty (CREATE associate director), Julie A. Kientz (CREATE faculty).

Inaccessible and Deceptive: Examining Experiences of Deceptive Design with People Who Use Visual Accessibility Technology

Aaleyah Lewis (CREATE Ph.D. student), Jesse J. Martinez (CREATE Ph.D. student), Maitraye Das (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), James Fogarty (CREATE associate director).

"It Brought Me Joy": Opportunities for Spatial Browsing in Desktop Screen Readers

Arnavi Chheda-Kothary (CREATE Ph.D. student), Ather Sharif (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), David Angel Rios, Brian A. Smith.

NightLight: Passively Mapping Nighttime Sidewalk Light Data for Improved Pedestrian Routing

Joseph Breda, Daniel Campos Zamora (CREATE Ph.D. student), Shwetak N Patel, Jon E. Froehlich (CREATE associate director).

ScreenAudit: Detecting Screen Reader Accessibility Errors in Mobile Apps Using Large Language Models

Mingyuan Zhong (CREATE Ph.D. student), Ruolin Chen, Xia Chen, James Fogarty (CREATE associate director), Jacob O. Wobbrock, (CREATE associate director).

Shifting the Focus: Exploring Video Accessibility Strategies and Challenges for People With ADHD

Lucy Jiang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Woojin Ko, Shirley Yuan, Tanisha Shende, Shiri Azenkot

SPECTRA: Personalizable Sound Recognition for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users through Interactive Machine Learning

Steven M. Goodman (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Emma McDonnell (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Jon E. Froehlich (CREATE associate director), Leah Findlater (CREATE associate director).

Supporting Mobile Reading While Walking With Automatic and Customized Font Size Adaptations

Junhan Kong (CREATE Ph.D. student), Jacob O. Wobbrock, (CREATE associate director), Tianyuan Cai, Zoya Bylinskii.

Toward Language Justice: Exploring Multilingual Captioning for Accessibility

Aashaka Desai (CREATE Ph.D. student), Rahaf Alharbi; Stacy Hsueh, (CREATE postdoctoral researcher), Richard E. Ladner (CREATE Director for Education Emeritus), Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director).

Understanding the LLM-ification of CHI: Unpacking the Impact of LLMs at CHI Through a Systematic Literature Review

Rock Yuren Pang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Hope Schroeder, Kynnedy Simone Smith, Solon Barocas, Ziang Xiao, Emily Tseng, Danielle Bragg.

Understanding the Training Experiences of Competitive Skiers with Tetraplegia

Tamanna Motahar (CREATE postdoctoral researcher), YeonJae Kim, Eden Fisher, Jason Wiese (past CREATE visiting faculty). 

“We do use it, but not how hearing people think”: How the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community Uses Large Language Model

Shuxu Huffman, Kelly Avery Mack (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Haotian Su, Qi Wang, Raja Kushalnagar.

"What Would I Want to Make? Probably Everything": Practices and Speculations of Blind and Low Vision Tactile Graphics Creators

Gina Clepper (CREATE Ph.D. student), Emma McDonnell (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Jon E. Froehlich (CREATE associate director), Leah Findlater (CREATE associate director).

Wordplay: Accessible, Multilingual Interactive Typography. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Amy J. Ko (CREATE faculty), Carlos Aldana Lira, Isabel Amaya.

Presentations

To be announced

Workshops

To be announced

Student Games Competition

Accepted entries in the Student Games Competition (SGC) are the top 10 finalists from two tracks: Transformative and Transgressive Play and Innovative Interfaces. Entries will be further judged at the conference, and a winner chosen for each track. 

OURCADE: A Game to Solve Real-World Game Accessibility Puzzles
Jesse Martinez | Transformative and Transgressive Play track

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Coffee Chat Recaps - Winter 2025

March 4, 2025

CREATE has initiated Coffee Chats – one or two opportunities per month for conversation among faculty, student, staff, and industry and community partners.

Topics have included opportunities for student involvement in CREATE, how researchers can benefit from community-engaged research, and where to find funding for research. These meetings have proved useful for sharing ideas, experiences, and information.  

Community-engaged research

This Winter quarter, two coffee chats centered on community-engaged research.

Communicating with research participants: Community partner visit

On February 26, Kathleen Voss introduced Kimberly Meck from the Disability Empowerment Center (DEC), one of our community partners. The center supports independent living for people with a variety of – and often multiple – disabilities. Members of the DEC community have been recruited to participate in CREATE research. Meck noted that, while initial recruitment materials shared with them have not always been accessible, usable, or understandable by community members, Voss’s work as CREATE’s Community Engagement and Partnerships Manager has resulted in significant improvement in accessibility.

Meck had this advice for working with communities such as DEC:

Recruitment requests need to be specific and explained in plain language, at a sixth-grade level. 

For example, recruitment materials often ask if people use “accessibility tools,” but a better way to ask this would be to use specific examples of the kinds of tools. That is, a  blind/low vision user might not think of JAWS as an “accessibility tool;” they may think of it as what they use to read web content. Rather than using terms such as “artificial intelligence” and “GAI,” use concrete examples such as “ChatGPT” and “Claude.” Even if people know the term “AI,” they may not know when they’re using AI content. This also applies to language about what participants will be doing. For example, instead of asking people to “participate in a panel discussion,” rephrase that to “talk to a few people about your experiences.”

Tailor your materials to the audience.

Would a video be better to explain a project? Folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities might best comprehend the information through short videos, which must include all other access features such as transcripts of audio, CART, subtitles, and sign language interpreters. Other people can’t process images; for them, materials with too many pictures are hard to use. Consider the audience’s age range and disability when choosing a medium and your language. 

Know your audience. 

Know your audience's disability, and know if they’re likely to have multiple disabilities. From Meck’s perspective, the best way to do that is to already be engaged and interacting directly with the people whose needs you’re trying to address.  

A researcher's perspective: Postdoctoral workshop

Meck’s visit followed a February 12 conversation between Jazette Johnson, a CREATE postdoctoral scholar, and Mark Baldwin, Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology at California State University, Los Angeles. Their discussion showcased key principles for undertaking community-engaged research.

Meet Jazette Johnson

CREATE ARRT postdoctoral fellow Jazette Johnson explores the impact of AI-generated images, particularly persuasive and difficult-to-detect misinformation, on adults and elders with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She was a 2020 Microsoft Ada Lovelace Fellow and a 2019 Newkirk Community Based Research Fellow.

CREATE ARRT postdoctoral fellows are funded by a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).

Researchers need to understand the needs of the community.

Baldwin drew on his graduate research about how to make outrigger canoes accessible to people with mobility challenges. He often worked on prototypes not in the lab but in the field, where he engaged deeply with people as they were getting in and out of canoes. Baldwin gained feedback, examples of challenges, and even assistance with fabrication. Through this on-site and collaborative work with the community in question, Baldwin developed a deep understanding of the needs of the community.

Johnson has observed different approaches to community-based research, including how researchers begin to build connections and trust within an organization, as well as how projects are formed either for the community or with the community. She documented her observations and outlined steps for deeper engagement in a blog as a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Informatics at the University of California – Irvine.

During their discussion, both Johnson and Baldwin emphasized that  research needs to be sustainable, maintained,  and  beneficial to the community. They highlighted the importance of being clear with the community about process and outcomes, including these core questions:

• What will the process be like?
• What happens when you’re done with your research/paper?
• What good will participation do for the community? 

In his case, Baldwin left 3D prototypes with the community, a form of direct benefit. And the organization’s director appreciates being mentioned in Baldwin’s publications, since it adds to credibility with prospective donors. 

Both Johnson and Baldwin, like Meck, recommend deeper engagement with partner communities. “Volunteer with the organization, attend their events, and invite others to attend as well,” said Baldwin. Their final advice:

Consider how much you’re taking from the organization and make sure you’re giving more.

One way to boost your community partner: share their events and fundraisers with the CREATE community. Contact Liz Diether-Martin, CREATE’s Digital Content Developer, with details.

CREATE Funding Opportunities

In January, we had a conversation on the various grants and funds offered by CREATE, led by Mark Harniss, CREATE Director for Education and an associate professor in Rehabilitation Medicine, and Dr. Olivia Banner, CREATE Director of Strategy and Operations. CREATE funds are described in detail on our website, but the event offered the opportunity to ask questions and also support in a year when the funding landscape is changing.

Our Resources for Disabled Academics page also lists funding sources such as scholarships, fellowships, and grants.

Visits with Shaun Kane and Hrovje Benko

We also held two coffee chats with industry affiliates, where they met with Ph.D. students in discussions about research.

Shaun Kane is a research scientist in Responsible AI at Google Research. His research leverages HCI, AI, and machine learning to support equality, independence, health, and creativity for people with disabilities. Kane is also an Associate Professor in the departments of Computer Science and Information Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Hrovje Benko is a Director of Research Science at Meta Reality Labs Research where he is developing novel interactions, devices and interfaces for Contextualized AI, Augmented and Virtual Reality. He currently leads a multi-disciplinary organization that includes scientists and engineers with expertise in human computer interaction, computer vision, machine learning, AI, design, neuroscience and cognitive psychology.

Panel discussion: Being disabled on the job market

Banner led a panel of faculty and students in a discussion about being a person with a disability (PWD) on the job market. Topics included navigating issues around disclosing or not disclosing a disability and what information to include throughout the job search process and in job market materials.

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Devva Kasnitz, Champion of Accessible Technologies

February 20, 2025

CREATE, and the accessibility community, is honoring Devva Kasnitz. An adjunct professor in Disability Studies at CUNY School of Professional Studies, Kasnitz was a beloved educator, advocate, and colleague in the world of accessible technologies. She passed in January 2025.

It would be difficult to understate Kasnitz’s indelible impact on the field of disability studies and accessibility, or breadth of her influence.

Not confined to academic circles alone, she was deeply committed to social justice, always striving to bridge the gap between theory and activism. She worked tirelessly to ensure that disability studies didn’t just remain an intellectual exercise, but instead contributed to real-world change for people with disabilities. Her work helped to redefine what it meant to engage with disability—not as a condition or an issue to be “fixed,” but as a complex, multifaceted aspect of human identity and experience that should be understood in its own right.

On the Make4All website, CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff and her colleagues Gillian Hayes and Cynthia Bennett shared the news of Kasnitz's passing and their appreciation for her leadership in empowering people with disabilities.

"Kasnitz was a transformative figure... pioneering work that bridges academia, advocacy, and innovation. Her interdisciplinary approach has shaped how we understand disability as a cultural, social, and political phenomenon, as recognized by her 10-year impact award at ASSETS 2021 (shared with Mankoff and Hayes).

"She has shaped an entire generation of new technologists who are empowered to prioritize disability studies, disability justice, and related concepts in their work.”  In another memorial post, Kasnitz’ friend and collaborator Susan Fitzmaurice wrote, “Devva was truly one of a kind. I don’t think she ever knew the word no. The disability community would not be what it is today without her incredible leadership in so many areas.”

Devva made space in our field for disabled people to be seen and feel successful and know that they were welcomed by letting them know that they could bring them their full selves to their academic work. She had a huge influence on accessibility and computer science that few people knew about, and tried to bridge the fields of accessibility and disability studies through publications and workshops. As Mankoff puts it:

“Devva’s influence on me was profound and started shortly after I began my first faculty position at UC Berkeley, when she introduced me to disability studies and helped me learn myself and my disability in the process."

Jennifer Mankoff, CREATE Co-founding Director

She published only two papers in any computer science conference, both at ASSETS, 10 years apart. The first paper won the 10-year impact award mentioned above, and 10 years later two disabled students who had been influenced by that first paper co-authored the second (which also won an award).

Mankoff recalls, "We interviewed each other about what it meant to be an academic with disabilities. And part of those interviews were self-descriptions of who we were and what our experiences were. I transcribed Devva’s speech because Zoom was unable to understand it, and that transcript was so eloquent and simple that one of the students looked at it and she said, 'Oh, is that a poem?' And so Devva’s description of her disability became published as a poem.”

My disability is that,
     when I walk into a room,
Everyone in that room
     who can see or hear
Labels me as disabled,
And treats me differently.
Because of how I look,
And how I move.
Because of how I sound,
I am instantly set apart.
And that is my disability.
I can’t blend.
I can’t hang out
   in the background.
I’m always visible.
I’m on display.
And of course my reaction is,
If everyone is going to stare anyhow...
Let’s give them something to look at.

“Devva lives on in CREATE," says Mankoff, "which embodies so much of what she taught me about how to make space for, support, and center disabled people and disability studies perspectives. CREATE is part of her legacy, not only in spirit, but because she generously gave advice and support to the center.”

Academic career

Devva Kasnitz trained as a cultural geographer at Clark University and then as a medical anthropologist at the University of Michigan, with postdoctoral work at Northwestern University and at the University of California, San Francisco in health policy and disability in urban and medical anthropology.  She held appointments at UC Berkeley (1995-2008) during which time she helped found its disability studies department and CUNY School of Professional Studies (2014-2025). Twice she was named the Kate Welling Distinguished Scholar in Disability Studies. She was the Executive Director of the Society for Disability Studies for much of its lifespan (1984-2012) and an Advisory Council Member to CommunicationFirst. Kasnitz received a 2000 Switzer Fellowship and was the 2014 recipient of the Society for Disability Studies, Senior Scholar Award.  Much of her work focused on speech impairment and the politics of social participation and on disability services in higher education. 

Kasnitz worked in disability studies from 1979 until her passing in 2025, maintaining an interest in ethnicity and immigration. She was on the founding boards of: the Society for Disability Studies, the Anthropology and Disability Research Interest Group of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and the Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living, and mentored a generation of disability studies scholars in the U.S., Australia, and Guatemala. 

One close colleague, Gloria Davies, noted in her blog that Kasnitz was “one was one of the first to push for the inclusion of disability as a central focus of sociological inquiry and was instrumental in establishing disability studies as a legitimate and vital area of academic research.”

Kasnitz received research funding from NIH, NIMH, NIDRR, the American Anthropological Association, The Felton Bequest, and Sprint Foundation, and was a 

Selected Bibliography

In 2025, she co-authored an article in Communications of the ACM on accessibility and AI: J. Mankoff, D. Kasnitz, L. Jean Camp, J. Lazar, H. Hochheiser: AI Must Be Anti-Ableist and Accessible, Communications of the ACM: 67 (12), 40-42

In 2022, she was co-organized a podcast on The Power of Art and AAC: Disrupting Racism, Ableism, and Oppression through Communiction First.

In 2022 she co-authored a policy brief on AI and Accessibility: Jennifer Mankoff, Devva Kasnitz, Disability Studies, L. Jean Camp, Jonathan Lazar, Harry Hochheiser: Areas of Strategic Visibility: Disability Bias in Biometrics. 

Her poem can be found in: M. Hofmann, D. Kasnitz, J. Mankoff, C. L. Bennett: Living Disability Theory: Reflections on Access, Research, and Design. ASSETS 2020: 4:1-4:13

In 2016, she released a book, Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability, with P. Block, A. Nishida, and N. Pollard. 

Her 10 year impact paper: J. Mankoff, G. R. Hayes, D. Kasnitz: Disability studies as a source of critical inquiry for the field of assistive technology. ASSETS 2010: 3-10

In 2001 she led a special issue of the Disability Studies Quarterly with her longtime collaborator Russell Shuttleworth on engaging anthropology in disability studies. 

This article includes excerpts from the Make4All web post, Susan Fitzmaurice's post on iloveyou-leadon.com, and Kasnitz's profile on the CUNY website.

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Two Research Fellowships on Accessibility from UW Population Health

February 27, 2025

The UW’s Population Health Initiative announced two fellowships that may be of interest to CREATE graduate and undergraduate students.

Accessibility of King County parks

Graduate and undergraduate students from all UW schools and colleges are encouraged to apply for the Population Health Applied Research Fellowship on the accessibility of King County Parks. The Summer 2025 fellowship team will collaborate with the King County Demographer and King County Parks to assess park accessibility.

This paid fellowship program offers training in data analysis techniques as well as in research and presentation skills, while they develop a work product for an external partner. Students will combine quantitative methods with field research to provide insights into physical access networks around parks, helping prioritize improvements to ensure all residents can enjoy these green spaces.

The UW’s Population Health Initiative is partnering with the university’s Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology to offer the fellowships.

Virtual Study Assistant leveraging AI

Four fellows will be selected from a variety of disciplines to investigate projects focused on finding innovative ways to maintain the balance between financial sustainability and social impact. Of particular interest:

Virtual Study Assistant for Potential Research Participants, a bilingual virtual study assistant that seeks to support recruitment and screening in research studies, leveraging AI to improve accessibility and reduce resource needs while ensuring careful consideration of potential biases in machine translations.

The Population Health Initiative is partnering with the UW’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship and CoMotion to offer its summer Social Entrepreneurship Fellows Program.

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Funding and training opportunities - Winter 2025

January 21, 2025

We've rounded up some great opportunities for accessibility research, funding, and training. Most notably, deadlines are approaching for two CREATE grants:

ACM CHI Workshop on Aging in Place call for participation

The ACM CHI workshop on Technology Mediated Caregiving for Older Adults Aging in Place focuses on research around technological supports for caregiving, specific to older adults as they age and begin to experience cognitive changes.

• Workshop: April 27
• February 13 - Position Papers due
• March 5 - Statements of interest due

See also

• Resources for Academics - A CREATE-curated list of grants, fellowships, mentoring, internships, and training opportunities for faculty and students.
• CREATE Research Funding - Funding for CREATE faculty, students, and staff working on accessibility-related research.

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Access Board’s Preliminary Findings on AI and People with Disabilities

January 21, 2025

This month, the United States Access Board presented its preliminary findings on the risks and benefits of AI for people with disabilities (PWD). The overall goal of these recommendations is to make AI more inclusive, transparent, and responsible, ensuring that people with disabilities are both protected and empowered in AI-driven environments.

The Access Board is an independent federal agency that promotes equality for people with disabilities (PWD), including the development of accessibility guidelines and standards. Created in 1973 to ensure access to federally funded facilities, the Access Board is now a leading source of information on accessible design. In 2023, a presidential executive order tasked the Access Board with examining the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI.

CREATE leadership and other experts consulted

The Access Board consulted with CREATE leadership on best practices and worked with the Center for Democracy and Technology and the American Association of People with Disabilities to create recommendations for federal agencies. They held information sessions and public hearings, and gathered written public comments via the docket on Regulations.gov.

Summary of Access Board recommendations

To minimize bias, include PWD in all stages of AI development

AI systems must be trained using diverse datasets that include people with disabilities. This includes hiring people with disabilities in technology positions and continuously monitoring and assessing AI’s impact on PWD. 

Federal agencies administering benefits programs (like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid) should engage with PWD to gather input on AI tools, conduct audits, and ensure that AI systems work properly before being fully implemented. A phased approach should be used for deploying algorithmic tools to ensure they are tested and meet the needs of people with disabilities.

Ensure that AI employment tools do not violate the rights of PWD

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) should update its guidance to protect employees, per the ADA rules. Employers must disclose when AI tools are used, so workers can request accommodations and opt out if necessary. Employers should provide reasonable accommodations for interactions with AI.