UW CREATE

Category: Participate in Create

How businesses and nonprofits, researchers, students, and the public can participate in CREATE.

The Future of Assistive Technology: A Panel Discussion

Anat Caspi, CREATE’s Director for Translation, participated in a panel discussion on the future of assistive technology and how recent innovations are likely to affect the lives of people with disabilities.

Read on to find out what Caspi had to say about how industry and education can and should shape future AT. For the full Provail Assistive Technology Panel discussion, watch the video below.

On what’s the biggest recent game-changer, Caspi noted that larger companies have recognized the importance of inclusive design and the need for multi-modal platforms, data standards, and the ability of Android, iOS and Microsoft platforms to offer integrated access functionality, not just at the single application level but throughout the entire operating system. While speech generation technology is evolving to include natural language processing such as gesturing and inflection and interaction devices like eye-gaze and pupil tracking, Caspi looks forward to communication devices being used to manipulate 3-D interaction in physical space as well as VR/AR.

With increased accessibility to prototyping, organizations and educators need to be reaching out to high school students and introduce them to design thinking and inclusive design.

Anat Caspi, CREATE Director for Translation, Director of the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology 

Caspi noted that small-scale innovation, as encouraged by the maker and DIY movements, can be adopted by niche as well as large-scale markets thanks to a game-changing trend in consumer electronics markets: the availability of cheap sensing technologies and the popularity of what’s commonly known as Internet of Things. With increased accessibility to prototyping, organizations and educators need to be reaching out to high school students and introduce them to design thinking and inclusive design. Recently, there is a trend even among the larger technology organizations to create the introductory tools and educational materials at scale in order to gain a steadier audience and attract a more diverse group of future engineers and innovators.

Further, the future will see assistive technology designed for a team — not just the primary user but also their support network: caregivers, parents, and therapists.

The panel’s sponsor, PROVAIL, is a non-profit based in western Washington that provides therapy and active living services for people with mild to severe disabilities, for whom service options and resources are often limited.

Watch the full panel discussion

Accessible CS Education workshop focuses on inclusive experiences

Amid a global pandemic, innovative thinkers have been hard at work developing plans to improve equity in modern learning environments. The Accessible Computer Science Education Fall Workshop was held November 17-19, 2020, and jointly sponsored by Microsoft, The Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities, and CREATE.

Each day of the event focused on strategies to improve classroom experiences for students and faculty with disabilities. You can watch recorded sessions where speakers provided a wide range of perspectives on computer science pedagogy and how to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in computing disciplines.

Two students work together in a lab on a computer screen using accessibility tools

Two students work together on a computer screen using accessibility tools.

The event provided an intimate environment to share work and establish new collaborations. The most visible result, for now, is five white papers and action plans taken from the break-out group reports (CREATE faculty contributors noted):

The program resulted in more than conversations; each group developed formal white papers and action plans that will guide future research and collaboration.

Microsoft logo

Throughout the workshop, participants focused on four areas:

  1. Education for employment pathways
  2. Making K-12 computing education accessible
  3. Making higher education in computing accessible
  4. Building accessible hardware and systems.

Conversations generated ideas about technologies that can boost employment and assist people with disabilities who experience barriers in various learning environments.

The committee behind the event successfully cultivated a productive and inclusive atmosphere that sponsors hope will translate to future projects. Members of the committee include Andrew Begel, Heather Dowty, Cecily Morrison, Teddy Seyed, and Roy Zimmerman from Microsoft; Anat Caspi and Richard Ladner from UW CREATE; and Clayton Lewis from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Education: Accessibility and Race

Our Fall CREATE Accessibility Seminar focused on the intersection of Race and Accessibility. This topic was chosen both for its timeliness and also as part of CREATE’s commitment to ensure that our work is inclusive, starting with educating ourselves about the role of race in disability research and the gaps that exist in the field.

  • A search of the ACM digital library for papers that used words like “race” “disability” and “Black” turned up extremely few results. Even when papers talk about both disability and race, they are often treated separately. For example, some provide information on what percentage of a certain group is in various categories without considering their intersection. A rare exception is author Dr. Christina Harrington, who has directly spoken to this intersection and was kind enough to make a guest appearance at our seminar.

Although we know this is only the first step in our journey toward racial justice, we learned some important things along the way.

“By the end of the seminar, we were sure of one thing only: This is a topic we could not do justice to in a single quarter. There is much more to uncover here, and much work to be done.”

student Momona Yamagami

  • The research topics we found, which included work on both disability and race-related factors, were more wide-ranging than disability alone, including transportation, e-government access, hate speech, policing, surveillance, and institutionalization.
  • Guest researchers joined in to share their expertise including Dr. Christina N. Harrington, from DePaul University, on community-based approaches to reconsidering design for marginalized populations; Dr. Karin D. Martin from UW’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, a crime policy specialist whose areas of expertise are monetary sanctions, racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and decision-making in the criminal justice context; and Dr. Shari Trewin, IBM Accessibility Manager and Research Lead, on bias in artificial intelligence.

There is an important and growing body of critical literature on the topic. To touch on just a few of the books we read when preparing for the seminar, see DisCrit: Critical conversations across race, class, & dis/ability (Connor et al, 2016), Disability incarcerated (Moshe et al, 2014), and Disability Visibility (Wong, 2020).

“I appreciated the opportunity to talk about the intersection of accessibility and race because although we talk a lot about accessibility in this research area, we don’t really talk about how race and its intersection with other minority identities plays a huge role in who gets access and for whom technologies are made,” said student Momona Yamagami. “By the end of the seminar, we were sure of one thing only: This is a topic we could not do justice to in a single quarter. There is much more to uncover here, and much work to be done.”

Learn more about the accessibility seminar

Selected readings

Highlights from the full reading list:

Caspi to lead collaborative $11.45M Transportation Data Equity Initiative

Tools like Google Directions and OneBusAway give up-to-date travel and transit information to make regional transit easier for most. But mobility applications focus on efficiency and shortest paths, leaving out information critical to people with disabilities, older adults, and anybody needing more support.

The Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, led by CREATE Associate Director for Translation Anat Caspi, and the UW’s Washington State Transportation Center will work with Microsoft, Google, the Washington Department of Transportation and other public and private partners to develop transit mobility technology as part of the Transportation Data Equity Initiative.

A bright pink placard with a wheelchair user icon and the words Step Free Route planted in bright green grass

The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the project $11.45 million in January as part of a program focused on promoting independent mobility for all.

Anat Caspi, CREATE Director for Translation and Affiliate Assistant Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering

“Transportation and mobility play key roles in the struggle for civil rights and equal opportunity. Affordable and reliable transportation allows people access to important opportunities in education, employment, health care, housing and community life,” said project lead Anat Caspi.

“Our goal is to translate the UW’s accessible technology research and data science products into real-world use, building technology foundations for good and avoiding repetition of exclusion patterns of the past or creation of new travel barriers to individuals.”

This article was excerpted from the UW News. Read the full article.

Reimagining Mobility: A Conversation with Sara Hendren

This UW CREATE event has passed. Continue for a summary and to watch the entire online session. Sign up for future Reimagining Mobility Conversations.

To launch the Reimagining Mobility Conversation Hub series we could think of no better guest speaker than Sara Hendren. Part of reimagining is examining the current state of the world, reframing our viewpoints, and having the courage to try new things. Sara’s work really epitomizes this process.

Sara Hendren shared her perspective on the future of mobility and lessons she learned through writing her new book, What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World.

In our Conversation Hub session, Hendren examined what it takes to move through the world with a disability, accounting for the affordances (or lack thereof) of the built environment and creative design that simultaneously facilitates participation and challenges ableist assumptions about design. She shared examples of how we can think past the better known examples of high tech prosthetics and universal design to also consider low tech, highly individualized access solutions. She discussed the universal human experiences of interdependence and dependence (rather than independence) as we navigate our world.

Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Olin College of Engineering. Her work spans collaborative public art and social design that engages the human body, technology, and the politics of disability — such as a lectern for short stature or a ramp for wheelchair dancing. She also co-founded the Accessible Icon Project. 

Bright yellow image from a book cover with the title 'What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World' and author 'Sara Hendren.'
Cover of Hendren’s book, What Can a Body Do? In the presentation, she explains the choice to have the text run past the boundary of the space.

New UW center bankrolled by Microsoft aims to make technology more accessible to disabled people

The Seattle Times | May 28, 2020

University of Washington professor Jacob Wobbrock figures the best way to make technology more accessible to disabled people is to anticipate their needs from the very beginning. “The world we live in is built on certain assumptions,’’ Wobbrock said. “If we question those assumptions right from the start when we design things, then suddenly things are accessible.’’

The Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experience (CREATE) is launching with a nine-member, interdisciplinary faculty led by Wobbrock and co-director Jennifer Mankoff. 

Read full Seattle Times article.

Microsoft invests $2.5M in CREATE, a new center for accessible tech at the University of Washington

GeekWire | May 28, 2020

Microsoft and the UW have long been aligned in a shared commitment to accessible technology and a world that is more accessible through technology. With a leadership team from six campus departments in three different colleges, CREATE will build upon the UW’s existing work in education, research and translation.

Read the full GeekWire article.

UW iSchool Ph.D. candidate Martez Mott works on Smart Touch technology with Ken Frye at Provail

$2.5 million inaugural investment from Microsoft launches CREATE

CREATE News | May 28, 2020
UW president Ana Mari Cauce, with Brad Smith, Tim Shriver and Jennifer Mankoff, announced the new center and Microsoft’s investment at the Microsoft Ability Summit on May 28.

With a mission to make technology accessible and to make the world accessible through technology, Microsoft’s support will build upon current projects in accessible transportation, augmenting abilities, inclusive design, and “do-it-yourself” technology.

The company’s endorsement of the UW’s accessibility work promises to catalyze additional investment, which, ultimately, could generate the full funding needed to provide long-term support for the Center. 

Learn more: