UnlockedMaps provides real-time accessibility info for rail transit users

Congratulations to CREATE Ph.D. student Ather Sharif, Orson (Xuhai) Xu, and team for this great project on transit access! Together they developed UnlockedMaps, a web-based map that allows users to see in real time how accessible rail transit stations are in six metro areas including Seattle, Philadelphia (where the project was first conceived by Sharif and a friend at a hackathon), Chicago, Toronto, New York, and the California Bay Area.

screenshot of UnlockedMaps in New York. Stations that are labeled green are accessible while stations that are labeled orange are not accessible. Yellow stations have elevator outages reported.

Shown here is a screenshot of UnlockedMaps in New York. Stations that are labeled green are accessible while stations that are labeled orange are not accessible. Yellow stations have elevator outages reported.

Sharif, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering advised by CREATE Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock, said the team also included nearby and accessible restaurant and bathroom data. “I think restaurants and restrooms are two of the most common things that people look for when they plan their commute. But no other maps really let you filter those out by accessibility. You have to individually click on each restaurant and check if it’s accessible or not, using Google Maps. With UnlockedMaps, all that information is right there!”

Adapted from UW News interview with Ather Sharif. Read full article »

CREATE Contributes to RFP on Healthcare Accessibility

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) requested public comment about comprehensive, longitudinal, person-centered care planning for people with Multiple Chronic Conditions (MCC). CREATE contributed to a disability justice-focused response that highlights nine recommendations:

Account for medical trauma.
Meet basic standards for accessibility.
Value individual and community knowledge about MCC.
Treat accessibility as a first-class component of patient care.
Prioritize community.
Look beyond “care.”
Remove financial barriers.
Include people with MCC in planning.
Enable people with MCC to enter clinical roles

Read the full response (PDF).

Wobbrock Co-leads ACM UIST Conference, Brings Accessibility to the Conversation

CREATE founding Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock served as General Co-Chair for ACM User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2022, held at the end of October.

Nearly 500 people traveled to beautiful Bend, OR to share their latest innovations in user interface software and technology from fabrication and materials, to VR and AR, to interactive tools and interaction techniques. UIST showcased the very best inventive research in the field of human-computer interaction. “Attending UIST is like attending an exclusive preview of possible tomorrows, where one gazes into the future and imagines living there, if only for a moment,” said Wobbrock.

Two photos from UIST 2022 Conference: A table of attendees chatting animatedly and a photo of Jacob O. Wobbrock and closing keynote speaker Marissa Mayer

Bringing accessibility into the conversation, Wobbrock’s opening keynote questioned the assumptions made in statements we often see, such as, “Just touch the screen” assumes the ability to see the screen, to move the hand, and so on.

For the closing keynote, available on YouTube, Wobbrock interviewed Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo and an early employee at Google. She studied Symbolic Systems and Computer Science with a focus on artificial intelligence at Stanford, along with Wobbrock. Mayer answered audience questions, including one about making design choices through a combination of crowdsourcing, an abundance of data, and strong opinions.

CREATE Leadership at ASSETS’22 Conference

CREATE Associate Director Jon Froehlich was the General Chair for ASSETS’22, the premier ACM conference for research on the design, evaluation, use, and education related to computing for people with disabilities and older adults. This year, over 300 participants from 37 countries engaged with state-of-the-art research in the design and evaluation of technology for people with disabilities. UW CREATE was a proud sponsor of ASSETS’22.

Keynote speaker Haben Girma is the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School and a leading human rights advocate in disability. Girma highlighted systemic ableism in education, employment, and tech and opportunities for change in her speech.

“There is a myth that non-disabled people are independent and disabled people are dependent. We are all interdependent. Many of you like drinking coffee; very few of you grow your own beans,” she pointed out.

ASSETS’22 was held in Athens, Greece. “The birthplace of democracy, we were surrounded by so many beautiful antiquities that highlighted the progress and innovation of humanity and served as inspiration to our community,” said Froehlich.

“Perhaps my favorite experience was the accessible private tours of the Acropolis Museum with conference attendees—hearing of legends, seeing the artistic craft, and moving about a state-of-the-art event center all in the shadow of the looming Acropolis was an experience I’ll never forget,” he added.

Artifact awards

CREATE Ph.D. student Venkatesh Potluri, advised by CREATE Co-Director Jennifer Mankoff in the Make4All Group, and his team tied for 1st place for the Artifact Award. Potluri presented their work on CodeWalk, Facilitating Shared Awareness in Mixed-Ability Collaborative Software Development.

Third place went to Ather Sharif‘s team, advised by Jacob Wobbrock, UnlockedMaps: Visualizing Real-Time Accessibility of Urban Rail Transit Using a Web-Based Map.

Future of urban accessibility

As part of the conference, Froehlich, Heather Feldner, and Anat Caspi held a virtual workshop entitled the “Future of Urban Accessibility” More here: https://accessiblecities.github.io/UrbanAccess2022/

A Ph.D. Student’s Promising Research in Mobility in Cerebral Palsy

Whether she’s researching how biofeedback systems can guide gait training in children with cerebral palsy or leading toy adaptation events, Alyssa Spomer is committed to advancing accessible technology.

A Ph.D. student in UW Mechanical Engineering (ME) and advised by CREATE Associate Director Kat Steele, Spomer is the student chair of CREATE-sponsored HuskyADAPT. Her studies have been multidisciplinary, spanning ME and rehabilitation medicine. She uses her engineering skills to understand the efficacy of using robotic devices to target and improve neuromuscular control during walking.

“Delving into how the central nervous system controls movement and how these systems are impacted by brain injury has been such an interesting aspect of my work,” Spomer says. “My research is a mix of characterizing the capacity for individuals to adapt their motor control and movement patterns, and evaluating the efficacy of devices that may help advance gait rehabilitation.”

In her dissertation work, Spomer is primarily evaluating how individuals adapt movement patterns while using a pediatric robotic exoskeleton paired with an audiovisual biofeedback system that she helped design. The Biomtoum SPARK exoskeleton works to sense and support motion at the ankle during walking, using motors worn on a hip belt to provide either resistance or assistance to the ankles during walking. The audiovisual system is integrated into the device’s app and provides the user with real-time information on their ankle motion alongside a desired target to help guide movement correction.

Collage of two images. Left: Man walking on a treadmill wearing a robotic exoskeleton device around his hips and legs while a female researcher monitors the process through a tablet. Right: A closeup of the researcher's hands holding the tablet showing the real-time information. — The audiovisual system that Spomer helped design (shown on a screen in the right photo) provides the user with real-time information on their ankle motion alongside a desired target to help guide movement correction.

Inspired by CREATE’s Kat Steele and the Steele Lab

Spomer was drawn to ME by the Steele Lab’s focus on enhancing human mobility through engineering and design. Working with Kat Steele has been a highlight of her time at the UW.

“I really resonated with Kat’s approach to research,” Spomer says. “The body is the ultimate machine, meaning that we as engineers can apply much of our foundational curriculum in dynamics and control to characterize its function. The beauty of ME is that you are able to develop such a rich knowledge base with numerous applications which really prepares you to create and work in these multidisciplinary spaces.”

This winter, Spomer will begin a new job at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare. She’s excited to pursue research that aligns with her Ph.D. work. Her goal remains the same: “How can we advance and improve the accessibility of healthcare strategies to help promote independent and long-term mobility?”

Excerpted from UW Mechanical Engineering, written by Lyra Fontaine with photos by Mark Stone, University of Washington. Read the full article

Increasing Data Equity Through Accessibility

Data equity can level the playing field for people with disabilities both in opening new employment opportunities and through access to information, while data inequity may amplify disability by disenfranchising people with disabilities.

In response to the U.S. Science and Technology Policy Office’s request for information (RFI) better supporting intra- and extra-governmental collaboration around the production and use of equitable data, CREATE Co-director, Jennifer Mankoff co-authored a position statement with Frank Elavsky, Carnegie Mellon University and Arvind Satyanarayan, MIT Visualization Group. The authors address the three questions most pertinent to the needs of disabled people.

They highlight the opportunity to expand upon the government’s use of accessible tools to produce accessible visualizations through broad-based worker training. “From the CDC to the Census Bureau, critical data that is highly important to all historically underrepresented peoples and should be available to underrepresented scholars and research institutions to access and use, must be accessible to fully include everyone.”

Reiterating “Nothing about us without us,” the statement notes that when authoring policies that involve data, access, and equitable technology, people with disabilities must be consulted. “Calls for information, involvement, and action should explicitly invite and encourage participation of those most affected.” In addition to process notes, the response addresses roles, education, laws, and tools.

Just having access to data is not enough, or just, when power, understanding and action are in the hands of government agents, computer scientists, business people and the many other stakeholders implementing data systems who do not themselves have disabilities.

The statement identifies access to the tools for producing accessible data, such as data visualizations, as low-hanging fruit and concludes with a call for funding of forward-thinking research that investigates structural and strategic limitations to equitable data access. More research is needed to investigate the ways that various cultural and socio-economic factors intersect with disability and access to technology.

Read the details in the full response on arxiv.org (PDF).

Large-Scale Analysis Finds Many Mobile Apps Are Inaccessible

Mobile apps have become a key feature of everyday life, with apps for banking, work, entertainment, communication, transportation, and education, to name a few. But many apps remain inaccessible to people with disabilities who use screen readers or other assistive technologies.

Any person who uses an assistive technology can describe negative experiences with apps that do not provide proper support. For example, screen readers unhelpfully announce “unlabeled button” when they encounter a screen widget without proper information provided by the developer.

iStockPhoto image of several generic application icons such as weather, books, music, etc.

We know that apps often lack adequate accessibility, but until now, it has been difficult to get a big picture of mobile app accessibility overall.

How good or bad is the state of mobile app accessibility? What are the common problems? What can be done?

Research led by Ph.D. student Anne Spencer Ross and co-advised by James Fogarty (CREATE Associate Director) and Jacob O. Wobbrock (CREATE Co-Director) has been examining these questions in first-of-their-kind large-scale analyses of mobile app accessibility. Their latest research automatically examined data from approximately 10,000 apps to identify seven common types of accessibility failures. Unfortunately, this analysis found that many apps are highly inaccessible. For example, 23% of the analyzed apps failed to provide accessibility metadata, known as a “content description,” for more than 90% of their image-based buttons. The functionality of those buttons will therefore be inaccessible when using a screen reader.

A bar chart showing the percentage of application icons and images missing labels. Out of 8,901 apps, 23 percent were not missing labels, 23 percent were missing labels on all elements. The rest of the apps were missing labels for 6 to 7 percent of their elements. — Bar chart shows that 23 percent of apps are missing labels on all their elements. Another 23 percent were not missing labels on any elements. And the rest were missing labels on 6 to 7 percent of their elements.

Clearly, we need better approaches to ensuring all apps are accessible. This research has also shown that large-scale data can help identify reasons why such labeling failures occur. For example, “floating action buttons” are a relatively new Android element that typically present a commonly-used command as an image-button floating atop other elements. Our analyses found that 93% of such buttons lacked a content description, so they were even more likely than other buttons to be inaccessible. By examining this issue closely, Ross and her advisors found that commonly used software development tools do not detect this error. In addition to highlighting accessibility failures in individual apps, results like these suggest that identifying and addressing underlying failures in common developer tools can improve the accessibility of many apps.

Next, the researchers aim to detect a greater variety of accessibility failures and to include longitudinal analyses over time. Eventually, they hope to paint a complete picture of mobile app accessibility at scale.

CREATE + I-LABS: focus on access, mobility, and the brain

We are excited to celebrate the launch of a new research and innovation partnership between CREATE and the UW Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS) focusing on access, mobility, and the brain.

Mobility technology such as manual and powered wheelchairs, scooters, and modified ride-on toy cars, are essential tools for young children with physical disabilities to self-initiate exploration, make choices, and learn about the world. In essence, these devices are mobile learning environments.

Collage of several toddlers playing, learning and laughing on modified ride-on toys

The collaboration, led by Heather Feldner and Kat Steele from CREATE, and Pat Kuhl and Andy Meltzoff from I-LABS, brings together expertise from fields of rehabilitation medicine and disability studies, engineering, language development, psychology, and learning. The team will address several critical knowledge gaps, starting with, How do early experiences with mobility technology impact brain development and learning outcomes? What are critical periods for mobility?

Read the full Research Highlight.

Accessible teaching strategies

CREATE faculty member Stephanie Kerschbaum has contributed to a set of guidelines to help UW faculty plan, design, and adapt their teaching around students’ needs.

“Accessibility is about recognizing that access is a complex, relational configuration as people move and share space together. Accessible teaching requires us to be in conversation with and responsive to our students.”

– Stephanie Kerschbaum, UW professor and disability studies scholar

The guidelines include general strategies such as anticipating students’ needs and using technology that supports accessibility and discarding technology that may impede it. Specific strategies include alternative assignments, smaller quizzes, and/or take home exams to provide students greater flexibility and agency.

Visit the UW Center for Learning and Teaching’s Accessible Teaching Strategies webpage for details and share the link with colleagues!

Community Day & Research Showcase 2022

CREATE’s 2nd Annual Community Day took place on June 8th and was a tremendous success. With over 100 registered participants and presenters, this year’s event demonstrates strong growth, returning to in-person (and also virtual) panel discussions and a research showcase of 14 project teams.

This year’s panels addressed the disproportionate impact of access to assistive technology on children with disabilities in BIPOC and immigrant communities as well as the issues that arise with the intersection of accessibility and biometric technologies. We were honored to host panelists from the AHSHAY Center, Provail, Open Doors for Multicultural Families, UW’s Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, and the University of Maryland’s iSchool.

Learn more:

More about 2022 Community Day
2022 Research Showcase Guide

CREATE becomes a principal sponsor of HuskyADAPT

CREATE is pleased to be a financial and advisory sponsor of HuskyADAPT, an interdisciplinary community that is dedicated to improving the availability of accessible technology in Washington and fostering conversations about the importance of accessible design.

HuskyADAPT is led by a team of UW students and six faculty advisors, including CREATE directors Kat Steele, Heather Feldner, Anat Caspi and Jennifer Mankoff. Open to all to join, their three primary focus areas are annual design projects, K-12 outreach and toy adaptation workshops, where volunteers learn how to modify off-the-shelf toys to make them switch accessible. The team also collaborates closely with Go Baby Go!.

Sign up for HuskyADAPT’s newsletter

Ga11y improves accessibility of automated GIFs for visually impaired users

Animated GIFs, prevalent in social media, texting platforms and websites, often lack adequate alt-text descriptions, resulting in inaccessible GIFs for blind or low-vision (BLV) users and the loss of meaning, context, and nuance in what they read. In an article published in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22), a research team led by CREATE Co-director Jacob O. Wobbrock has demonstrated a system called Ga11y (pronounced “galley”) for creating GIF annotations and improving the accessibility of animated GIFs.

Video describing Ga11y, an Automated GIF Annotation System for Visually Impaired Users. The video frame shows an obscure image and the question, How would you describe this GIF to someone so they can understand it without seeing it?

Ga11y combines the power of machine intelligence and crowdsourcing and has three components: an Android client for submitting annotation requests, a backend server and database, and a web interface where volunteers can respond to annotation requests.

Wobbrock’s co-authors are Mingrui “Ray” Zhang, a Ph.D. candidate in the UW iSchool, and Mingyuan Zhong, a Ph.D. student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

Part of this work was funded by CREATE.

Wobbrock team’s VoxLens allows screen-reader users to interact with data visualizations

A screen reader with a refreshable Braille display. Credit: Elizabeth Woolner/Unsplash

Working with screen-reader users, CREATE graduate student Ather Sharif and Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock, along with other UW researchers, have designed VoxLens, a JavaScript plugin that allows people to interact with visualizations. To implement VoxLens, visualization designers add just one line of code.

Millions of Americans use screen readers for a variety of reasons, including complete or partial blindness, learning disabilities or motion sensitivity. But visually-oriented graphics often are not accessible to people who use screen readers. VoxLens lead author Sharif, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering noted, “Right now, screen-reader users either get very little or no information about online visualizations, which, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, can sometimes be a matter of life and death. The goal of our project is to give screen-reader users a platform where they can extract as much or as little information as they want.”

With written content, there is a beginning, middle and end of a sentence, Wobbrock, Co-senior author explained, “But as soon as you move things into two dimensional spaces, such as visualizations, there’s no clear start and finish. It’s just not structured in the same way, which means there’s no obvious entry point or sequencing for screen readers.”

Participants learned how to use VoxLens and then completed nine tasks, each of which involved answering questions about a visualization. Compared to participants who did not have access to this tool, VoxLens users completed the tasks with 122% increased accuracy and 36% decreased interaction time.

Learn more

This article was excerpted from a UW News article. Read the full article for additional details about the project.

Accessible & Inclusive Textiles Hackfest

July 15, 2022

In July 2022, CREATE hosted a hackfest for anyone interested in exploring, generating, and working with a variety of textile artifacts that center access and inclusion. From knitting patterns that can be automatically modified to address specific access needs, to auxetic harnesses that can comfortably hold a child in a ride on an accessible toy car, we see an opportunity to create new pipelines for equitable participation and access. Similarly, clothing and accessories can express style, support the profile of a body presenting according to gender preference, and fit with specific cultural identities.

We invite you to join us in envisioning accessible and inclusive textile futures by creating new approaches and ideas together during our hackfest.

Judging event and details

The judges included:

Billy Price, CEO of BillyFootwear.com, an accessible footwear company
Vidya Narayanan, Amazon Fashion
Chris Anderson, Textile Engineer and Technical Director, ZSK USA Inc.
Adriana Schultz, Assistant Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

The prize for the top project will be an embroidery machine.

Mentors

Jennifer Mankoff, CREATE Co-Director and the Richard E. Ladner Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, whose work is focused on giving people with disabilities the voice, tools and agency to advocate for themselves. She takes a multifaceted approach that includes machine learning, 3D printing, and tool building, at a high level, Mankoff’s goal is to tackle the technical challenges necessary for everyday individuals and communities to solve real-world problems.

Afroditi Psara, a UW assistant professor in the UW Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) and transdisciplinary artist whose research focuses on the art and science interaction with a critical discourse in the creation of artifacts. Interested in the revitalization of tradition as a methodology of hacking existing norms about technical objects, she uses cyber crafts and other gendered practices as speculative strings, and open-source technologies as educational models of diffusing knowledge.

Daniela Rosner, an associate professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the UW. Her research investigates the social, political, and material circumstances of technology development. She has worked in design research at Microsoft Research, Adobe Systems, Nokia Research and as an exhibit designer at several museums and is the author of several articles on craft and technoculture, including “Legacies of craft and the centrality of failure in a mother-operated hackerspace.”

Jen Mankoff receives SIGCHI Social Impact Award

Jennifer Mankoff, a white, Jewish woman with an invisible disability. She is smiling broadly and standing casually in the Allen Center atrium

Congratulations to CREATE Co-Director Jennifer Mankoff! She has been awarded a 2022 Social Impact Award by SIGCHI, the special interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for professionals, academics and students interested in human-technology and human-computer interaction (HCI).

Mankoff was cited for research focused on accessibility to give people the voice, tools and agency to advocate for themselves. “She strives to make change at both structural and individual levels. For example, her recent work on fabrication of accessible technologies considers not only innovative tools that can enable individual makers, but also the larger clinical and sociological challenges to disseminating and sharing designs.”

SIGCHI also noted Mankoff’s work at the intersection of mental health and discrimination that uses sensed data and self-reports to explore how external risks and pressures interact with people’s responses to challenging moments such as discrimination experiences, or classroom access. In addition, she has conducted leading work supporting environmental sustainability and topics relevant to gender and race.

Within SIGCHI, Mankoff spent many years working with, and at times leading, AccessSIGCHI, an independent organization that advocates for improved inclusion of people with disabilities within the SIGCHI community. This work has directly impacted the inclusiveness of numerous SIGCHI conferences and led to the creation of an Adjunct Chair for Accessibility on the SIGCHI Executive Committee, institutionalizing accessibility as an important facet of SIGCHI activities.

This article was excerpted and adapted from SIGCHI Awards 2022.

Heather Feldner ‘wrote the book’ on power mobility device for babies

CREATE Associate Director Heather Feldner has authored two guidebooks, instructing caregivers, researchers and clinicians how to introduce Permobil’s Explorer Mini to young children between the ages of 12 and 36 months. Permobil’s Explorer Mini is a new, lightweight, joystick-operated powered mobility device that provides opportunities for mobility, exploration, and play for children with disabilities at ages and stages that are more equitable compared to their peers without disabilities.

Feldner and her co-authors have synthesized their own work and work from pioneers in the field, describing the benefits and impact of on-time access to mobility, as well as evidence-based strategies for introducing powered mobility to young children based on developmental and experiential learning stages. This multidisciplinary guideline was authored by Feldner, a pediatric physical therapist, Teresa Plummer, an occupational therapist, and Alyson Hendry, a speech-language pathologist, with key input from 40 stakeholders across the world, including caregivers of young children who use powered mobility devices.

The guideline is available open-source and consists of a full, peer-reviewed research document as well as a caregiver guidebook version introducing the Explorer Mini and the various learning stages for infants and toddlers with disabilities. The guideline covers a wide variety of topics including collaborative partnership with caregivers and children, safety, a description of developmental domains that powered mobility introduction affects (such as cognition, communication, socio-emotional development, and participation), as well as practical tips and strategies for facilitating success in mobility and exploration at every learning stage.

Feldner’s research at UW centers on the design and implementation of mobility technology and its effects upon activity and participation within a variety of personal and environmental contexts, including how perceptions of disability and identity emerge and evolve through technology use. She is also engaged in research and advocacy work centered on disability as an integral part of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and anti-ableism in healthcare education and beyond.

CREATE student Venkatesh Potluri is an Apple Scholar

Venkatesh Potluri has been selected as a 2022 Apple Scholar — a fellowship that supports cutting-edge machine learning researchers at the graduate and post-graduate level.

A Ph.D. student in the Allen School, Potluri is advised by CREATE Co-Director Jennifer Mankoff in the Make4All Group.

Venkatesh Potluri leans toward the camera smiling with eyes cast downward.

As an Apple Scholar, Potluri is recognized as an emerging leader in computer science and engineering and will receive funding to pursue his Ph.D., internship opportunities, and mentorship with an Apple researcher.

Potluri’s research makes overlooked software engineering spaces such as IOT and user interface development accessible to developers who are blind or visually impaired. Visually impaired himself, his work systematically understands the accessibility gaps in these spaces and addresses them by enhancing widely used programming tools.

Previously, Potluri received a 2019 Google Lime Scholarship and a 2018-2019 Microsoft Endowed Fellowship.

Feldner and Harniss receive research poster award for work on allyship training in rehabilitation education

CREATE Associate Director Heather Feldner and co-authors, including CREATE affiliate faculty Mark Harniss, received a blue ribbon award as one of the top 3 posters for Social Responsibility at the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) Combined Sections meeting.

Selected by the Health Policy & Administration Section Global Health Special Interest Group of the APTA, the team was cited for their work to amplify the voices and experiences of students, staff, and faculty who identify as disabled/with a disability across UW campuses. These experiences are the foundation for developing a disability allyship training curriculum for health professions education and beyond.

The team behind the paper and poster, “Diversity and Equity Includes Disability: Developing a Disability Allyship Training Curriculum for Rehabilitation Education” is: Heather A. Feldner, Katherine Chamblin, Lesley M. Ellis, Heather D. Evans, Mark Harniss, Danbi Lee, and Joanne Woiak.

Mark Harniss a white man in his 50s with short brown hair and blue eyes wearing a dark polo shirt in front of fall-colored leaves.

The initial work was funded by a UW CLIME small grant, and several team members will be continuing the next phases of this work with new grant funding received in January from the UW Royalty Research Fund.

Richard Ladner named AAAS Fellow

Congratulations to CREATE Director for Education Richard Ladner on being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)! He is among 564 new fellows from around the world elected in 2021 for distinguished achievements in science and engineering.

Ladner was recognized for his advocacy and inclusion efforts for people with disabilities in computer science and related fields. His work has included development of numerous tools to perform specific tasks, including translating textbook figures into formats accessible to persons with disabilities, and enabling people to communicate via cell phones using American Sign Language.

In addition to the AAAS fellowship, Ladner has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, an Association for Computing Machinery Fellow and an IEEE Fellow.

Excerpted from the UW News article. See the AAAS announcement.

CREATE Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock Named ACM Fellow

We congratulate CREATE Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock on being named an ACM Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery for his contributions to human-computer interaction and accessible computing!

Wobbrock’s research seeks to understand and improve people’s interactions with computers and information, especially for people with disabilities. He is the primary creator of ability-based design, which scrutinizes the ability assumptions embedded in technologies in an effort to create systems better matched to what people can do.

Jacob O. Wobbrock, a 40-something white man with short hair, a beard, and glasses. He is smiling in front of a white board.

For this and his other contributions to accessible computing, he received the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award and the 2019 SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award. He was also inducted to the ACM CHI Academy in 2019. In addition to being a CREATE founding co-director, Professor Wobbrock directs the ACE Lab and is a founding member of UW’s cross-campus DUB Group.

The ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. Its Fellows program recognizes the top 1% of members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to the ACM and the larger computing community. ACM Fellows are nominated by their peers, with nominations reviewed by a distinguished selection committee.

Wobbrock, and the other 70 Fellows named in 2021 will be formally recognized at the ACM Awards Banquet in San Francisco in June.

This article is adapted from the UW Information School (iSchool) article and the ACM press release.