UW CREATE

Category: Announcements

Deep Gratitude to Wobbrock, Ladner & Caspi

June 13, 2023

The CREATE community thanks three of our founding leaders for their energy and service in launching the center as we embark upon some transitions. “CREATE would not be where it is today without the vision, passion, and commitment that Jake, Richard, and Anat brought to their work leading the center,” says CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff.

Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock: From vision, to launch, to sustainable leadership

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

It was back in June 2019 that Jacob O. Wobbrock, CREATE’s founding Co-Director, was on a panel discussion at Microsoft’s IdeaGen 2030 event, where he talked about ability-based design. Also on that panel was future CREATE Associate Director Kat Steele. After the event, the two talked with Microsoft Research colleagues, particularly Dr. Meredith Ringel Morris, about the possibility of founding an accessible technology research center at the University of Washington.

Wobbrock and Steele thought that a center could bring faculty together and make them more than the sum of their parts. Within a few months, Wobbrock returned to Microsoft with Jennifer Mankoff, Richard Ladner, and Anat Caspi to pitch Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie, on the idea of supporting the new Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE). With additional support from Microsoft President Brad Smith, and input from Morris, the center was launched by Smith and UW President Ana Marie Cauce at Microsoft’s Ability Summit in Spring 2020.

Wobbrock, along with Mankoff, served as CREATE’s inaugural co-directors until June 2023, when Wobbrock stepped down into an associate director role, with Mankoff leading CREATE as sole Director. “I’m a founder by nature,” Wobbrock said. “I helped start DUB, the MHCI+D degree, a startup called AnswerDash, and then CREATE. I really enjoy establishing new organizations and seeing them take flight. Now that CREATE is soaring, it’s time for more capable hands than mine to pilot the plane. Jennifer Mankoff is one of the best, most capable, energetic, and visionary leaders I know. She will take CREATE into its next chapter and I can’t wait to see what she does.” Wobbrock will still be very active with the center.

Professor Emeritus Richard Ladner, one of CREATE’s founders and our inaugural Education Director

Headshot of Richard Ladner. He has grey hair and beard and is wearing a blue shirt and colorful tie.

We thank Professor Emeritus Richard Ladner for three years of leadership as one of our founders and CREATE’s inaugural Education Director. Ladner initiated the CREATE Student Minigrant Program that helps fund small grants up to $2,000 in support of student initiated research projects.

Ladner has shepherded 10 minigrants and worked directly with eight Teach Access Study Away students. Through his AccessComputing program, he helped fund several summer research internships for undergraduate students working with CREATE faculty. All CREATE faculty contribute to accessibility related education in their courses, where he provides encouragement.

Welcome Mark Harniss, CREATE’s New Director for Education

Anat Caspi, inaugural Director of Translation

Anat Caspi: A white woman smiling into the camera. She is wearing a purple blouse.

Anat Caspi defined and elevated CREATE’s translation efforts, leveraging the center’s relationships with partners in industry, disability communities, and academia. Her leadership created sustainable models for translation and built on our prior successes. Collaborations with the TASKAR center, HuskyADAPT, and the UW Disability Studies Program have ensured diverse voices to inform innovation. 

Director of Translation duties will be distributed across Mankoff, CREATE’s Community Engagement and Partnerships Manager Kathleen Quin Voss, and the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, which Caspi directs.

Codesigning Videoconferencing Tools for Small Groups with Mixed Hearing Status

June 12, 2023

CREATE students and faculty have published a new paper at CHI 2023, ‘Easier or Harder, Depending on Who the Hearing Person Is’: Codesigning Videoconferencing Tools for Small Groups with Mixed Hearing Status”.

Led by Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) Ph.D. candidate Emma McDonnell and supported by CREATE, this work investigates how groups with both hearing and d/Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) members could be better supported when using captions during videoconferences. 

Emma McDonnell, a white woman in her 20s with short red hair, freckles, and a warm smile. In the background: a lush landscape and the Colosseum.

Researchers recruited four groups to participate in a series of codesign sessions, which de-centers researchers’ priorities and seeks to empower participants to lead the development of new design ideas. In the study, participants reflected on their experiences using captioning, sketched and discussed their ideas for technology that could help build accessible group norms, and then critiqued video prototypes researchers created of their ideas. 

One major finding from this research is that participants’ relationships with each other shape what kinds of accessibility support the group would benefit from.

For example, one group that participated in our study were cousins who had been close since childhood. Now in their mid-twenties, they found they did not have to actively plan for accessibility; they had their ways of communicating and would stop and clarify if things broke down. On the other hand, a group of colleagues who work on technology for DHH people had many explicit norms they used to ensure communication accessibility. One participant, Blake, noted, “I was pretty emotional after the first meeting because it was just so inclusive.” These different approaches demonstrate that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to communication accessibility – people work together as a group to develop an approach that works for them. 

This paper also contributes new priorities for the design of videoconferencing software. Participants focused on designing add-ons to videoconferencing systems that would better support their group in communicating accessibly. Their designs fell into four categories: 

  • Speaker Identity and Overlap: Having video conferencing tools identify speakers and warn groups when multiple people speak at once, since overlapping speech can’t be captioned accurately. Participants found this to be critical, and often missing, information.
  • Support for Behavioral Feedback: Building in ways for people to subtly notify conversation partners if they need to adjust their behavior. Participants desired tools to flag when people need to adjust their cameras, critical caption errors, and if speech rate gets too high. They considered, but decided against, a general purpose conversation breakdown warning. 
  • Videoconferencing Infrastructure for Accessibility: Adding more features and configurable settings around conversational accessibility to videoconferencing platforms. Participants desired basic controls, such as color and font size, as well as the ability to preset and share group accessibility norms and customize behavior feedback tools. 
  • Sound Information: Providing more information about the sound happening during a conversation. Participants were excited about building sound recognition into captioning tools, and considered conveying speech volume via font weight, but decided it would be overwhelming and ambiguous. 

This research also has implications for broader captioning and videoconferencing design. While often captioning tools are designed for individual d/Deaf and hard of hearing people, researchers argue that we should design for the entire group having a conversation. This shift in focus revealed many ways that, on top of transcribing a conversation, technology could help groups communicate in ways that can be more effectively captioned. Many of these tools are easy to build with current technology, such as being able to click on a confusing caption to request clarification. The research team hopes that their work can illuminate the need to pay attention to groups’ social context when studying captioning and can provide videoconferencing platform designers a design approach to better support groups with mixed hearing abilities. 

McDonnell is advised by CREATE Associate Directors Leah Findlater, HCDE, and Jon Froehlich, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

Grant Opportunity: Disability Inclusion

June 11, 2023

The U.S. Department of Labor has made available $2 million for the first year of a cooperative agreement for an employer-focused, disability policy development and technical assistance center. 

From the EARN announcement website:

The purpose of this program is to identify and promote adoption of innovative and equitable evidence-based policy and practice solutions to help public and private sector employers of all sizes recruit, hire, retain, and advance people with disabilities, including those from historically underserved communities.

The entity awarded the EARN cooperative agreement will conduct research that values the perspectives of historically underserved groups, conduct policy analysis to identify and validate effective disability-inclusive policy and practice models, translate that knowledge into engaging tools for employers and intermediary organizations, and provide technical assistance and training to help employers of all sizes, both public and private, create inclusive workplace cultures that support high-quality employment of people with disabilities.

CREATE’s Newest Ph.D Graduates

June 9, 2023

We’re proud to see these talented, passionate students receive their Ph.D.s and excited to see how they continue their work in accessibility.

Alyssa Spomer, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Dissertation: Evaluating multimodal biofeedback to target and improve motor control in cerebral palsy

Advisor: Kat Steele

Honors, awards and articles:

Current: Clinical Scientist at Gillette Children’s Hospital, leading research in the Gillette Rehabilitation Department to improve healthcare outcomes for children with complex movement conditions.

Elijah Kuska, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Elijah Kuska smiling with a sunset in the background

Dissertation: In Silico Techniques to Improve Understanding of Gait in Cerebral Palsy

Advisor: Kat Steele

Honors, awards and articles:

Plans: Elija will start as an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines in the Mechanical Engineering Department in January 2024.

Megan Ebers, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Headshot of Megan Ebers, a young woman with dark wavy hair, smiling broadly.

Dissertation: Machine learning for dynamical models of human movement

Advisors: Kat Steele and Nathan Kutz

Awards, honors and articles:

  • Dual Ph.D.s in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Math
  • NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Plans: Megan will join the UW AI Institute as a postdoc in Spring of 2023 to pursue clinical translation of her methods to evaluate digital biomarkers to support health and function from wearable data. 

Nicole Zaino, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Headshot of Nicole Zaino, a young woman with wavy brown hair and teal eyeglasses.

Dissertation: Walking and rolling: Evaluating technology to support multimodal mobility for individuals with disabilities

Advisors: Kat Steele and Heather Feldner

Awards, honors and articles: 

  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, 2018 – Present
  • Gatzert Child Welfare Fellowship, University of Washington, 2022
  • Best Paper Award at the European Society of Movement Analysis for Adults and Children, 2019.
  • Finalist, International Society of Biomechanics David Winter Young Investigator Award, 2019

Plans: Nicole is headed to Bozeman Montana to join the Crosscut Elite Training team to work toward joining the national paralympic nordic ski team for Milano-Cortina 2026, while working part-time with academia and industry partners. 

Ricky Zhang

Headshot of Ricky Zhang, a young man with short hair, wearing black frame glasses and a gray business suit.

Dissertation: Pedestrian Path Network Mapping and Assessment with Scalable Machine Learning Approaches

Advisors: Anat Caspi and Linda Shapiro

Plans: Ricky will be a postdoc in Bill Howe’s lab at the University of Washington.

Kat Steele, who has been busy advising four out of five of these new PH.D.s, noted, “We have an amazing crew of graduate students continuing and expanding upon much of this work. We’re excited for new collaborations and translating these methods into the clinic and community.”

CREATE Ph.D. Student Emma McDonnell Wins Dennis Lang Award

June 6, 2023

Congratulations to Emma McDonnell on receiving a Dennis Lang Award from the UW Disability Studies program! McDonnell, a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in Human Centered Design & Engineering, is advised by CREATE associate director Leah Findlater.

Emma McDonnell, a white woman in her 20s with short red hair, freckles, and a warm smile. in the background: a lush landscape and the Colosseum.

McDonnell’s research focuses on accessible communication technologies and explores how these tools could be designed to engage non-disabled people in making their communication approaches more accessible. She has studied how real-time captioning is used during videoconferencing and her current work is exploring how people caption their TikTok videos. 

The Dennis Lang Award recognizes undergraduate or graduate students across the UW who demonstrate academic excellence in disability studies and a commitment to social justice issues as they relate to people with disabilities.

This article is excerpted from Human Centered Design & Engineering news.

Grant Opportunity for Disability Policy, Assistance

May 25, 2023

The U.S. Department of Labor has made available $2 million for the first year of a cooperative agreement for an employer-focused, disability policy development and technical assistance center. The Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN) helps employers, human resources professionals, and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility staff find the resources they need to recruit, hire, retain and advance people with disabilities.

The deadline for application is June 23, 2023
Full announcement and application instructions

EARN’s work has received several awards, particularly for its popular Inclusion@Work Framework, a seven-part guide for building a disability-inclusive workplace.

The U.S. Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) aims to increase the number and quality of employment opportunities for people with disabilities by developing and influencing policies and practices.

A11yBoard Seeks to Make Digital Artboards Accessible to Blind and Low-Vision Users

Just about everybody in business, education, and artistic settings needs to use presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Adobe Illustrator. These tools use artboards to hold objects such as text, shapes, images, and diagrams. But for blind and low vision (BLV) people, using such software adds a new level of challenge beyond keeping our bullet points short and images meaningful. They experience:

  • High added cognitive load
  • Difficulty determining relationships between objects
  • Uncertainty if an operation has been successful

Screen readers, which were built for 1-D text information, don’t handle 2-D information spaces like artboards well.

For example, NVDA and Windows Narrator would only report artboard objects in their Z-order – regardless of where those objects are located or whether they are visually overlapping – and only report its shape name without any other useful information.

From A11yBoard video: still image of an artboard with different shapes and the unhelpful NVDA & Windows Narrator explanation as text.

To address these challenges Zhuohao (Jerry) Zhang, a CREATE Ph.D. student advised by Jacob O. Wobbrock at the ACE Lab, asked: 

  • Can digital artboards in presentation software be made accessible for blind and low-vision users to read and edit on their own?
  • Can we design interaction techniques to deliver rich 2-D information to screen reader users?

The answer is yes! 

They developed a multidevice, multimodal interaction system – A11yBoard – to mirror the desktop’s canvas on a mobile touchscreen device, and enabled rapid finger-driven screen reading via touch, gesture, and speech. 

Blind and low-vision users can explore the artboard by using a “reading finger” to move across objects and receive audio tone feedback. They can also use a second finger to “split-tap” on the screen to receive detailed information and select this object for further interactions.

From A11yBoard video: still image showing touch and gesture combos that help blind and low vision users lay out images and text.

“Walkie-talkie mode,” when turned on by dwelling a finger on the screen like turning on a switch, lets users “talk” to the application. 

Users can therefore access tons of details and properties of objects and their relationships. For example, they can ask for a number of closest objects to understand what objects are near to explore. As for some operations that are not easily manipulable using touch, gesture, and speech, we also designed an intelligent keyboard search interface to let blind and low-vision users perform all object-related tasks possible. 

Through a series of evaluations with blind users, A11yBoard was shown to provide intuitive spatial reasoning, multimodal access to objects’ properties and relationships, and eyes-free reading and editing experience of 2-D objects. 

Currently, much digital content has been made accessible for blind and low-vision people to read and “digest.” But few technologies have been introduced to make the creation process accessible to them so that blind and low-vision users can create visual content on their own. With A11yBoard, we have gained a step towards a bigger goal – to make heavily visual-based content creation accessible to blind and low-vision people.

Paper author Zhuohao (Jerry) Zhang is a second-year Ph.D. student at the UW iSchool. His work in HCI and accessibility focuses on designing assistive technologies for blind and low-vision people. Zhang has published and presented at CHI, UIST, and ASSETS conferences, receiving a CHI best paper honorable mention award, a UIST best poster honorable mention award, and a CHI Student Research Competition Winner, and featured by Microsoft New Future of Work Report 2022. He is advised by CREATE Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock.

Zhuohao (Jerry) Zhang standing in front of a poster, wearing a black sweater and a pair of black glasses, smiling.

Postdoc Research Spotlight: Making Biosignal Interfaces Accessible

The machines and devices we use every day – for example, touch screens, gas pedals, and computer track pads – interpret our actions and intentions via sensors. But these sensors are designed based on assumptions about our height, strength, dexterity, and abilities. When they aim for the average person (who does not actually exist), they aren’t usable or accessible. 

CREATE Post-doctoral student Momona Yamagami seeks to integrate personalization and customization into sensor design and the resulting algorithms baked into the products we use. Her research has shown that biosignal interfaces that use electromyography sensors, accelerometers, and other biosignals as inputs provide promise to improve accessibility for people with disabilities.

In a recent presentation of her research as a CREATE postdoctoral scholar, she emphasizes that generalized models that are not personalized to the individual’s abilities, body sizes, and skin tones may not perform well.

Momona Yamagami presenting her biosignal research, with a slide noting that biosignals fluctuate and are higher on the neural circuitry.
Momona Yamagami presenting her biosignal research, with a slide noting that biosignals fluctuate and are higher on the neural circuitry and a smartwatch as an “always on” sensors for continuous health monitoring.

Individualized interfaces that are personalized to the individual and their abilities could significantly enhance accessibility. Continuous (i.e., 2-dimensional trajectory-tracking) and discrete (i.e., gesture) electromyography (EMG) interfaces can be personalized to the individual: 

  • For the continuous task, we used methods from game theory to iteratively optimize a linear model that mapped EMG input to cursor position.
  • For the discrete task, we developed a dataset of participants with and without disabilities performing gestures that are accessible to them.
  • As biosignal interfaces become more commonly available, it is important to ensure that such interfaces have high performance across a wide spectrum of users.

Momona Yamagami is completing her time as a CREATE postdoctoral scholar, advised by CREATE Co-director Jennifer Mankoff. Starting summer 2023, Yamagami will be an Assistant Professor at Rice University Electrical & Computer Engineering as part of the Digital Health Initiative.

Accessible eSports Showcase 2023: Event Recap

In April 2023, CREATE hosted its first ever Accessible eSports Showcase event, bringing together members of the CREATE community, local community organizations, tech and games Corporate Partners, and folks from all over the Seattle area looking to learn about and celebrate ongoing strides being made in making video games more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities.

Zillow Commons in the Bill & Melinda Gates Center was transformed into a gamer’s playground with big-screen projections of racing and party games, a VR space, and stations where users could customize their own adaptive gaming tech.

UW CREATE Presents: Accessible eSports Showcase 2023 with a colorful digital background.

CREATE’s Community Partners had showcase tables, demoing the latest advances in accessible gaming technology. And UW graduate students, undergraduates, and postdocs highlighted the many creative ways they’ve worked to make games accessible:

  • Event co-organizers Jesse Martinez (Ph.D. student, CSE) and Momona Yamagami (Postdoc, UW CREATE) opened with an overview of the many accommodations and community access norms they established for the event.
  • Emma McDonnell (Ph.D. Student, HCDE) live-narrated a round of Jackbox Games’s Fibbage, followed by a competitive mixed-ability showdown in the Xbox racing game DiRT 5, in which Martinez, taking his turn as emcee/color commentator, highlighted the many techniques being used to make Xbox gameplay accessible.
  • Rachel Franz (Ph.D. Student, iSchool) let attendees try out her latest work in accessible VR research.
  • Jerry Cao (Ph.D. Student, CSE) showed attendees how to use custom 3D-printed input devices for computer accessibility.
  • A brilliant team of undergraduates from HuskyADAPT, including Mia Hoffman, Neha Arunkumar, Vivian Tu, Spencer Madrid, Simar Khanuja, Laura Oliveira, Selim Saridede, Noah Shalby, and Veronika Pon, demoed three fantastic projects working to bring improved switch access to video games.
Momona Yamagami and Jesse Martinez open the Accessible eSports Showcase in front of a large screen with a dedicated screen showing a sign language interpreter.

Corporate and Community Partners connected with the CREATE community and engage directly with our many attendees.

  • Solomon Romney, of Microsoft’s Inclusive Tech Lab, showcased the brilliant design of the Xbox Adaptive Controller (XAC), the state-of-the-art tool in accessible controller design, and guided attendees through setting up and playing with their own XACs.
  • Amber Preston of Seattle Adaptive Sports described the work SAS does to make all sorts of games and recreational activities more accessible and inclusive in the Seattle area.
  • Other corporate and community partners, including researchers from Meta, Google, and Apple, were on hand to meet and connect with attendees around other exciting developments in the accessible gaming space.
Three student members at the HuskyADAPT table, sharing information and video about the program.
The Seattle Adaptive Sports table, with the different size balls used in games and a screen showing video of disabled athletes playing.

The organizers thank all attendees, partners, volunteers, and organizers for making the event such a success! As gaming accessibility continues to blossom, we’re looking forward to doing more events like in the future – we hope to see you at the next one! 

Pre-event announcement

Who should attend?

Anyone is welcome to attend this event! In particular, we extend the invitation to anyone who has an interest in video game accessibility, who works in the games industry, or who is a member of the Seattle-area disability community.

More information about the event will be available here soon! In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our event co-organizer Jesse Martinez at jessejm@cs.washington.edu. We hope to see you there!

Stipend and paid parking for non-UW-affiliated attendees

For our attendees with disabilities who are not affiliated with UW, we will have a $50 stipend to cover local travel and time spent at the event. You will receive a gift card link within 10 business days after the event. We will also pay for event parking. We hope that will be helpful in covering some of the costs of attending this event.

Activities

Mainstage gameplay

Attendees can go head-to-head in our accessible esports tournament that will include Forza Horizon 5 and Rocket League.

Spotlight tables

Engage with CREATE corporate and community partners around game accessibility, including Seattle Adaptive Sports, Microsoft XBox, HuskyADAPT, and UW CREATE. Participate in accessible gaming tech demos, and more!

Non-competitive gameplay

In addition to the mainstage gameplay, there will be various accessible video games available to play, ranging from cooperative games to streamed large-audience party games. We’ll also have a VR station available! Games will include

  • Jackbox Party Pack Games
  • Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
  • Beat Saber

Socializing, networking and food

We will also have designated spaces for attendees to socialize with each other and make new connections in the accessible gaming space. Dinner will be provided.

Accessibility & logistics

Wheelchair-accessible space & accommodations

The building entrance is level from Stevens Way and Zillow Commons is wheelchair-accessible via the elevator and wide doorways. A volunteer will be at the building entrance to help guide you to the event.

We will have the following accommodations in place:

  • Live gameplay commentary on Mainstage gameplay
  • Captions and ASL interpretation for all Mainstage content
  • Quiet room with ample seating and a silent livestream of Mainstage gameplay
  • Complimentary food and beverages
  • Screen reader-accessible online event program/guide

Adaptive devices

For those interested in playing games, we will have the following devices:

  • Xbox Adaptive Controllers with customizable switches, joysticks, and foot pedals
  • Additional specialty gaming equipment provided by industry partners (TBD)

If you have any additional accommodation requests, please include them in your event registration, or reach out to Jesse Martinez at jessejm@cs.washington.edu.

Considerations to keep in mind  

During the event, attendees can support each other with the following considerations:

  • Introduce yourself by name in a conversation.
  • Keep pathways clear, and be mindful of others when navigating the space.
  • DO NOT touch other attendees, their assistive devices, or their mobility devices without consent.
  • Please keep conversation family-friendly as there are children at the event.
  • Please wear a mask and keep your hands clean (hand sanitizer is available throughout the venue).

Questions?

Please reach out to Jesse Martinez (event co-organizer) at jessejm@cs.washington.edu with questions about this event.

International Disability Rights: Past, Present, & Future – A Must-See Public Lecture with Senator Floyd Morris

International Disability Rights: Past, Present, & Future
Public Lecture with Senator Floyd Morris

Wednesday, April 19, 2023, 2:30 p.m.
HUB 340
Free and open to the public

Floyd Morris, Ph.D., is the Director of the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of the West Indies, a current Member and Past President of the Senate of Jamaica – where he was also their first Blind member – and Special Rapporteur on Disability for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). He has researched inclusion of persons with disabilities in several aspects of Jamaican life and published numerous books and articles.

Senator Floyd Morris, a black man wearing a grey suit and red tie, seated in front of the Jamaican flag.

Senator Morris is a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which is the treaty body charged with the responsibility of overseeing the implementation and interpretation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

Sponsored by the UW Center for Global Studies, UW Disability Studies, and Law, Societies, and Justice programs to welcome visiting lecturer Floyd Morris.

Advisory Board: Welcome ChrisTiana ObeySumner

CREATE welcomes our newest Advisory Board member, ChrisTiana ObeySumner.

ObeySumner (they/them) is the CEO and principal consultant of Epiphanies of Equity LLC (https://www.christianaobeysumner.com/), a social equity consulting firm specializing in change management, social and organizational psychology, intersectional equity and liberation, and disability justice.

ChrisTiana ObeySumner: a Black, queer, non-binary, and multiply disabled researcher in front of a bright red background

For two decades, they’ve dedicated their life and career to exploring and practicing innovative approaches to achieving social equity – in other words, how to sustainably and effectively bring parity to areas of disparity so “humans can human with other humans” equitably, collectively, and intersectionally.

ObeySumner joins board members Mary Bellard, Amy Hurst (who also joined recently), and Jonathan Lazar. Rory A. Cooper and Juan E Gilbert are concluding their board memberships this spring; we thank them for their perspective and expertise over the past two years.

CSE course sequence designed with “accessibility from the start”

The CSE 121, 122, and 123 introductory course sequence lets students choose their entry point into computer science and engineering studies, whatever their background, experience, or confidence level. And, as part of the effort to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), the courses were designed with “accessibility from the start.”

A member of the course development team was a dedicated accessibility expert, tasked with developing guidelines for producing accessible materials: using HTML tags correctly, providing alt text for all images, and ensuring accurate captions on all videos. The team audited both content and platforms — including the course website — for accessibility concerns.

In CSE’s DEIA Newsletter article, author Brett Wortzman, Associate Teaching Faculty, points out that “many of the guidelines followed are good universal design, helping all students, not just those with disabilities, and at the same time reducing the work for instructors needing to comply with many DRS [Disability Resources for Students] accommodations.”

Excerpted from article by Brett Wortzman, Associate Teaching Faculty, in CSE’s DEIA Newsletter.

Honoring Judy Heumann’s outsized impact

Judy Heumann — disability activist and leader, presidential advisor to two administrations, polio survivor and quadriplegic — passed away on Saturday, March 4. Heumann’s family invited the community to honor her life at a memorial service and burial that is now available on video with ASL, captioning, and English interpretation of Yiddish included.

Who was Judy Heumann?

Judy Heumann fought for disabled rights and against segregation. She led the “longest nonviolent occupation of a federal building in American history,” according to the New York Times. When communications were cut off by the government, she passed messages to supporters using sign language and received support from the Black Panthers and the Mayor of San Francisco. The protest led to successful action on section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Heumann did not stop there. According to President Biden, “Her courage and fierce advocacy resulted in the Rehabilitation Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act – landmark achievements that increased access to education, the workplace, housing, and more for people with disabilities.” Heumann talked in a 2020 article in Ability Magazine about the importance of “helping people to identify and understand the scope of disability that the ADA and other laws cover.” She believed in an expansive view of disability, and wanted to see more people included in the disability rights movement, stating “… I think it’s a combination of shame and fear that we may not be talking about if we have diabetes or epilepsy or cancer or anxiety or depression or bipolar or whatever. …I think expanding our circle is one of the big issues that we need to be dealing with over the next five to ten years.” Heumann went on to talk about the power of knowing that you have rights under the law, recognizing and fighting discrimination, and the importance of diversifying the disability movement by race, religion and sexual orientation: “We need to have an understanding, for example, of the fact that [disparities] may exist in various communities based on race and socio-economic status, how there are people within the U.S. who are not benefiting from laws because they don’t have the resources to hire an attorney or an advocate. The government, in my view, is not always enforcing laws as they should be.”

Heumann’s auto-biography, Being Heumann came out in 2020 (co-authored with Kristen Joiner). Crip Camp documents the 1970s birth of Heumann’s and other activists’ advocacy for people with disabilities. Ability Magazine inter-view touching on the ADA, the increasing diversity of the disability community, and the pandemic.

CREATE Co-director Jennifer Mankoff noted that, “Personally speaking, her influence on my career has been indirect but important. In my first years as a faculty member, at UC Berkeley, the Center for Independent Living (which Heumann founded and called “the first organization in the world to be run for and by the disabled” according to the NY Times) reached out to educate me about disability activism, through another leader, Scott Leubking. At the same time, I began to learn about disability studies work with the help of Berkeley’s nascent disability studies program and specifically academic and activist Devva Kasnitz. These early encounters directly influenced the direction of my research and advocacy and are visible today in CREATE’s emphasis on disability studies and disability justice and entwining them in its accessibility work.”

Learn more about Judy Heumann

Heumann’s auto-biography, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, published in 2020 and co-authored with Kristen Joiner. 
Crip Camp documents the 1970s birth of Heumann’s and other activists’ advocacy for people with disabilities.
Ability Magazine interview touching on the ADA, the increasing diversity of the disability community, and the pandemic.

Postdoctoral Fellowship application open: Accessibility researcher in physical computing and fabrication

Update: January 2, 2024

CREATE, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, the College of Engineering, and the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine have an opening for a Postdoctoral Scholar.

The goal of this fellowship is to train leaders in accessibility research who can harness advances in physical computing and fabrication to enhance community living and participation with people with disabilities. Specifically, we seek applicants who are interested in developing their skills and expertise investigating how fabrication technologies (e.g., 3D printing and machine knitting) and physical computing technologies can be used to address challenges in rehabilitation technology and accessibility. Applicants from technical backgrounds (e.g., computer science or engineering), rehabilitation medicine (e.g., physical or occupational therapy), or disability studies are encouraged to apply. Multiple postdoctoral fellows with complementary backgrounds will be recruited to collaborate and advance multidisciplinary innovation. Each postdoctoral scholar will be mentored by at least two faculty from the CREATE center.

Application deadlines

Application review begins February 15, 2024 and continues until the position is filled. Start date is flexible but September 2024 is preferred. 

CREATE’s mission includes ensuring that people with disabilities are able to participate in the research process; and CREATE’s faculty and students include people with disabilities. CREATE also has funding to help address accessibility concerns above and beyond the support offered by the UW Campus disability offices. CREATE’s mission also includes a focus on racial equity and representation across intersectional identities.

Postdoctoral scholar appointments are full time, with a 12-month service period. Reappointments may be possible, inclusive of all postdoctoral experience at other institutions. Anticipated start is September 2024. This individual will work closely with a team of computer scientists, engineers, rehabilitation professionals, disability studies scholars and human computer interaction experts from CREATE to improve accessibility for people with disabilities.

For this NIDILRR-funded research, the postdoctoral fellows will engage in 70% research, 20% didactics, and 10% community engagement. The primary responsibilities for each fellow will be to propose and execute an accessibility research project that uses physical computing and fabrication applications to improve community living for people with disabilities including scholarly publications and presentations; engage in coursework and seminars that supplement existing knowledge in areas of engineering, rehabilitation, and disability studies; engage with community organizations that serve disability communities in the Western Washington region to identify participation and technology needs; and facilitate a community-based physical computing workshop.  

We are looking for candidates who have a passion for multidisciplinary research and have expertise in one or more of: the technical aspects of accessibility; rehabilitation technology; disability studies; and fabrication/physical computing technologies. You will be working closely with people with disabilities, engineers, rehabilitation professionals, and other scientists throughout the research project. This training grant is led by four faculty from the Center for Research and Education in Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE):

The overarching mission of CREATE is to make technology accessible and make the world accessible through technology. We take a needs-based, human-centered approach to accessibility research and education, work closely with stakeholders in disability communities, and apply knowledge and skills across computer science, rehabilitation medicine, engineering, design, and disability studies to improve access and quality of life for diverse populations. More information about our center and on-going research can be found on the CREATE website.

Qualifications

Applicants must have a Ph.D. or foreign equivalent, at the start date of the position, in engineering, human centered design, or rehabilitation science. Other life sciences may be considered. Rehabilitation professionals should be licensed or eligible for licensure in their respective discipline in the State of Washington. Strong oral and written communication skills and the ability to work as an effective member of a multidisciplinary team are critical for the success of this research. Candidates may have no more than 48 months of prior postdoc experience in order to fulfill the initial 1-year appointment period.

Application instructions

Applicants should provide all of the following:

  1. A cover letter clearly describing your interest and relevant background in this project
  2. A CV
  3. Copies of two representative publications
  4. Contact information for three references

Submit application and materials to create-jobs@uw.edu.

Questions about the project and application may also be submitted to create-jobs@uw.edu.

Jacob O. Wobbrock awarded Ten-Year Technical Impact Award

January 5, 2023

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has honored CREATE Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock and colleagues with a 10-year lasting impact award for their groundbreaking work improving how computers recognize stroke gestures.

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

Wobbrock, a professor in the Information School, and co-authors Radu-Daniel Vatavu and Lisa Anthony were presented with the 2022 Ten Year Technical Impact Award in November at the ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI). The award honors their 2012 paper titled Gestures as point clouds: A $P recognizer for user interface prototypes, which also won ICMI’s Outstanding Paper Award when it was published.

The $P point-cloud gesture recognizer was a key advancement in the way computers recognize stroke gestures, such as swipes, shapes, or drawings on a touchscreen. It provided a new way to quickly and accurately recognize what users’ fingers or styluses were telling their devices to do, and even could be used with whole-hand gestures to accomplish more complex tasks such as typing in the air or controlling a drone with finger movements.

The research built on Wobbrock’s 2007 invention of the $1 unistroke recognizer, which made it much easier for devices to recognize single-stroke gestures, such as a circle or a triangle. Wobbrock called it “$1” — 100 pennies — because it required only 100 lines of code, making it easy for user interface developers to incorporate gestures in their prototypes.

This article was excerpted from the UW iSchool article, iSchool’s Wobbrock Honored for Lasting Impact by Doug Parry

Rory Cooper, CREATE Advisory Board member, receives IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award

Congratulations to CREATE Advisory Board member Rory Cooper on receiving the 2022 IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award!

For more than 25 years, Cooper has been developing technology to improve the lives of people with disabilities and his inventions have helped countless wheelchair users get around with more ease and comfort. 

Rory A. Cooper, a white man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a suit and tie.

Cooper’s first innovations in mobility were a modification to the back brace he wore after a spinal cord injury left him paralyzed from the waist down, then a better wheelchair, then an electric-powered version that helped its user stand up. After earning his Ph.D. in electrical & computer engineering with a concentration in bioengineering at University of California at Santa Barbara, he focused his career on developing assistive technology.

Cooper (second from the left) and his colleagues—David Constantine, Jorge Candiotti, and Andrin Vuthaj (standing)—at the University of Pittsburgh’s Human Engineering Research Laboratories working on the MEBot. Photo: ABIGAIL ALBRIGHT

Since 2013, Cooper and his team at the University of Pittsburgh’s Human Engineering Research Laboratories have been working to develop advancements including a wheelchair that can travel on rough terrain. 

The most common cause of emergency-room visits by wheelchair users is falling from the chair or tipping over. “This often happens when the individual’s wheelchair hits thresholds in doorways, drives off small curbs, or transitions from a sidewalk to a ramp,” Cooper said.

The team hopes that the Mobility Enhancement Robotic Wheelchair, known as the MEBot, can minimize such injuries.

The MEBot, can climb curbs up to 20 centimeters high and can self-level as it drives over uneven terrain. It does so thanks to six wheels that move up and down plus two sets of smaller omnidirectional wheels in the front and back. The wheelchair’s larger, powered wheels can reposition themselves to simulate front-, mid-, or rear-wheel drive.

This article is excerpted from the IEEE Spectrum’s award announcement.

Carl James Dunlap Memorial Scholarship

University of Washington student Carl James Dunlap had a powerful impact on the UW community with his vibrant personality and persistent advocacy for students with disabilities. To honor his legacy, the Dunlap family established the Carl James Dunlap Memorial Endowment. The Dunlap Memorial Endowment seeks to support students with disabilities encountering unique challenges when attending and completing higher education. The D Center is grateful to further Carl’s legacy by awarding two $2,000 Carl James Dunlap Memorial Scholarships to UW students for Winter 2023.

The Dunlap Memorial Scholarship selection criteria is a UW student who identifies as having a disability and is currently receiving financial aid.

Apply no later than January 31

If you have any questions, please contact the D Center at dcenter@uw.edu.

The Carl James Dunlap Memorial Fund is accepting donations to further help students with disabilities.

Flyer for the Carl James Dunlap Memorial Scholarship with a link to contact dcenter@uw.edu for details and a picture of the UW Seattle campus in fall.

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:

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

Read the full response (PDF).

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.

Headshot of Stephanie Kerschbaum, a white woman with short, red hair wearing a suit and pearls

“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!