Congratulations to UW CREATE faculty on multiple awards at ASSETS 2020, the International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility!
“The University of Washington has been a leader in accessible technology research, design, engineering, and evaluation for years. This latest round of awards from ACM ASSETS is further testament to the great work being done at the UW. Now, with the recent launch of CREATE, our award-winning faculty and students are brought together like never before, and we are already seeing the great things that come of it. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.”
— Prof. Jacob O. Wobbrock, Founding Co-Director, UW CREATE
Best artifact: SoundWatch, as described in the paper Exploring Smartwatch-based Deep Learning Approaches to Support Sound Awareness for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users Dhruv Jain, Hung Ngo, Pratyush Patel, Steven Goodman, Leah Findlater, Jon Froehlich Links: github code repository | presentation video
UW CREATE faculty members Jon Froehlich and Leah Findlater have helped develop a smartwatch app for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people who want to be aware of nearby sounds. The smartwatch will identify sounds the user is interested in — such as a siren, a water faucet left on, or a bird chirping — and send the user a friendly buzz along with information.
“This technology provides people with a way to experience sounds that require an action… [and] these devices can also enhance people’s experiences and help them feel more connected to the world,” said lead author Dhruv Jain, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
The SoundWatch smartwatch app that identifies nearby sounds and alerts wearers. Jain et al./ASSETS 2020
The team presented their findings Oct. 28 at ACCESS, the ACM conference on computing and accessibility.
Learn more about SoundWatch, the full team and how the smartwarch app evolved from a collection of tablets scattered around a house.
The team, one of only three selected across the country, includes Sam Logan, an associate professor at Oregon State University, and Lisa Kenyon, a professor at Grand Valley State University.
Study Details: The use of powered mobility devices for young children with cerebral palsy (CP) has been gaining traction. Evidence shows that the use of powered mobility at young ages complements (rather than detracts from) other interventions focused on more traditionally viewed mobility skills such as crawling and walking, as well as broadens accessible participation and experiences for children and families.
Heather will lead the multi-site team of investigators in collecting preliminary data to investigate device use patterns, caregiver perceptions, and developmental outcomes of children with CP after introduction of two forms of early powered mobility technologies: commercial (the Permobil® Explorer Mini) and DIY (a Go Baby Go modified ride-on toy car). As FDA clearance for the Explorer Mini was just received in March of 2020, this is the first opportunity to provide key data on the integration and use of the device in the home and community, and it represents the first opportunity to compare the novel device with a modified ride-on car, which has also been customized to support early self-initiated mobility in a socially inviting way.
Why it matters: Research comparing these devices in natural environments can add critical data to the evidence supporting early powered mobility for children with CP as a part of a multimodal mobility approach to care across the lifespan. It also presents a unique opportunity to further engage in critical discussion of facilitators and barriers to mobility and access for disabled children and families.
Dr. Kat M. Steele, an associate director of CREATE, presents at NIH’s Rehabilitation Research 2020: Envisioning a Functional Future conference on Friday, October 16, 2020. She will be presenting in the Mobility Across the Lifespan session with Bernadette Gillick, PhD, PT from the University of Minnesota and Levi Hargrove from the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. This meeting highlights rehabilitation research and informs the congressionally-mandated NIH Research Plan on Rehabilitation Research to inform priorities for the next four years.
Dr. Steele’s talk “Normalcy Fallacy: Reimagining Mobility for Scientific Discovery & Innovation” focuses on examining how our assumptions of “normal” movement can hinder scientific and translational research to support mobility across the lifespan.
UW CREATE has a large and quality presence at ASSETS 2020, the premier annual conference for accessible computing research. Drawing from three departments, University of Washington authors contributed to six papers and two posters to be presented at this year’s online conference. Three of our papers were nominated for best paper! Seven members also served in conference roles: two on the organizing committee and five on the program committee.
The papers and posters span a variety of topics including input performance evaluation of people with limited mobility, media usage patterns of autistic adults, sound awareness for d/Deaf and hard of hearing people, and autoethnography reports of multiple people with disabilities. Congratulations to the authors and their collaborators!
We look forward to seeing you virtually at ASSETS 2020, which runs October 26 to 28.
An autoethnograher’s daughter’s handcrafted cane, as presented in the paper, “Living disability theory: Reflections on access, research, and design.”The SoundWatch, as described in the paper: “SoundWatch: Exploring smartwatch-based deep learning approaches to support sound awareness for deaf and hard of hearing users.”
Accepted papers
Input accessibility: A large dataset and summary analysis of age, motor ability and input performance
Leah Findlater, University of Washington Lotus Zhang, University of Washington
The reliability of fitts’s law as a movement model for people with and without limited fine motor function
Ather Sharif, University of Washington Victoria Pao, University of Washington Katharina Reinecke, University of Washington Jacob O. Wobbrock, University of Washington
Lessons learned in designing AI for autistic adults: Designing the video calling for autism prototype
Andrew Begel, Microsoft Research John Tang, Microsoft Research Sean Andrist, Microsoft Research Michael Barnett, Microsoft Research Tony Carbary, Microsoft Research Piali Choudhury, Microsoft Edward Cutrell, Microsoft Research Alberto Fung, University of Houston Sasa Junuzovic, Microsoft Research Daniel McDuff, Microsoft Research Kael Rowan, Microsoft Shibashankar Sahoo, UmeΠInstitute Of Design Jennifer Frances Waldern, Microsoft Jessica Wolk, Microsoft Research Hui Zheng, George Mason University Annuska Zolyomi, University of Washington
SoundWatch: Exploring smartwatch-based deep learning approaches to support sound awareness for deaf and hard of hearing users
Dhruv Jain, University of Washington Hung Ngo, University of Washington Pratyush Patel, University of Washington Steven Goodman, University of Washington Leah Findlater, University of Washington Jon E. Froehlich, University of Washington
Megan Hofmann, Carnegie Mellon University Devva Kasnitz, Society for Disability Studies Jennifer Mankoff, University of Washington Cynthia L Bennett, Carnegie Mellon University
Navigating graduate school with a disability
Dhruv Jain, University of Washington Venkatesh Potluri, University of Washington Ather Sharif, University of Washington
Accepted posters
HoloSound: Combining speech and sound identification for Deaf or hard of hearing users on a head-mounted display
Ru Guo, University of Washington Yiru Yang, University of Washington Johnson Kuang, University of Washington Xue Bin, University of Washington Dhruv Jain, University of Washington Steven Goodman, University of Washington Leah Findlater, University of Washington Jon E. Froehlich, University of Washington
#ActuallyAutistic Sense-making on Twitter
Annuska Zolyomi, University of Washington Ridley Jones, University of Washington Tomer Kaftan, University of Washington
Organizing Committee roles
Dhruv Jain as Posters & Demonstrations Co-Chair Cynthia Bennett as Accessibility Co-Chair
Program committee roles
Cynthia Bennett (recent alumni, now at Apple/CMU) Leah Findlater Jon Froehlich Richard Ladner Anne Ross
Mobility is a central part of accessibility and this new Conversation Hub, hosted by CREATE Associate Directors Kat Steele and Heather Feldner, provides a way to connect and learn from guests who are engaged in critical mobility work — ranging from researchers to small business owners to self-advocates.
We will dive deeply into conversations about mobility as a multifaceted concept, and explore how it intersects with other dimensions of access across contexts of research, education, and public policy.
The CREATE team applauds and congratulates AccessADVANCE, a new project that was recently awarded $1 million by the National Science Foundation. AccessADVANCE seeks to increase the participation and advancement of women with disabilities in academic science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers.
There are relatively few women who currently hold faculty positions in STEM fields and even fewer with disabilities. This effort has the potential to impact both — women in general, because any faculty member may at some point become disabled, permanently or temporarily and women with disabilities who are trying to advance into STEM careers.
“To effectively support female STEM faculty, attention to disability issues must be woven into the entire sociotechnical ecosystem of STEM departments,” said Cecilia Aragon, a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering and AccessADVANCE co-principal investigator. “Many diversity efforts, even those that aim to take an intersectional approach with regard to race and gender, do not address disability.”
Aragon and co-principal investigator Dr. Sheryl Burgstahler, founder and director of CREATE partner organizations DO-IT Center and UW Access Technology Center, will develop and expand an online Knowledge Base and other resources to share Q&As, case studies, and promising practices regarding institutional practices.
Dr. Richard Ladner, CREATE’s Director for Education, has been named the 2020 recipient of the Public Service Award for an individual from the National Science Board (NSB). In recognizing Ladner, the board cited his exemplary science communication, diversity advocacy, and well-earned reputation as the “conscience of computing.”
“When we think about diversity, we must include disability as part of that. The conversation about diversity should always include disability.”
Richard Ladner, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
From his foundational experiences as a graduate student teaching hands-on mathematics in his community to co-founding AccessComputing, Dr. Ladner has spent his career educating and changing the conversation on diversity. In recognizing Ladner, the National Science Board (NSB) cited his exemplary science communication, diversity advocacy, and well-earned reputation as the “conscience of computing.”
“When we think about diversity, we must include disability as part of that. The conversation about diversity should always include disability,” said Ladner.
As a faculty member, now Professor Emeritus, in the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, he has mentored 136 students, including 30 Ph.D. students. “I visited Richard’s lab at the University of Washington just over 10 years ago. While I did get to see Richard, he was most interested in my meeting his Ph.D. students — and I could see why,” recalled Vicki Hanson, CEO of the Association for Computing Machinery. “Richard had provided an atmosphere in which his talented students could thrive. They were extremely bright, enthusiastic, and all involved in accessibility research. I spent the day talking with his students and learning about their innovative work.”
Ladner has participated in, or organized, numerous computer science workshops for high school students with disabilities. Currently, he and his colleagues are developing accessible curricula and training teachers to help more students with disabilities participate in AP Computer Science Principles courses. Their curricula train teachers of blind and visually impaired students, teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students, and teachers of learning-disabled students.
In accepting congratulations for the reward, Ladner wrote to his peers, “I am very pleased and honored to receive this Public Service Award from the National Science Board. I’m very fortunate to be in a school where we support each other in our research, teaching, and service, including public service.”
Jonathan Kaufman, in Forbes magazine’s Mindset Matters column, calls for innovation to make workplaces inclusive and accessible. In his May 31, 2020 column, An Object Lesson For Business, And Innovation In The Age Of A Pandemic, he highlights the partnership between CREATE and Microsoft as a prime example of how we can “redefine the very nature of work and develop the tools needed to create a culture of innovation.”
“It is at this moment that offers organizational leadership a means to reframe the status that disability plays in how we redefine the very nature of work and develop the tools needed to create a culture of innovation and cultivate a management strategy that embraces the needs of individual employees to be more productive and in turn give back to the collective goals of the company.”
iSchool news, University of Washington | May 28, 2020
Jacob O. Wobbrock, CREATE Co-Director and a professor in the UW Information School, has become one of the world’s foremost experts on accessible computing and human-computer interaction. His approach is to create interactive systems that can capitalize on the situated abilities of users, whatever they are, rather than make users contort themselves to become amenable to the ability-assumptions of rigid technologies. He calls this perspective Ability-Based Design.
In the iSchool article, Wobbrock answers questions about what CREATE will mean for his research, starting with ‘why do we need CREATE?’ and a very compelling answer: “We’re getting older and living longer. If we live long enough, we will all have disabilities. So the need for technology to be accessible, and for technology-mediated services to be accessible, is clearer than ever.”
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.
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.
The University of Washington today announced the establishment of the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE). Fueled by a $2.5 million inaugural investment from Microsoft, UW CREATE is led by an interdisciplinary team whose mission is to make technology accessible and to make the world accessible through technology.
The center will build upon current projects in prioritizing and automating personalization, transitioning transportation to be accessible; augmenting abilities through wearable technologies; developing inclusive, intelligent systems and data sets; and “do-it-yourself” accessible technology production.
The partnership between UW and Microsoft has opened student internship and career opportunities, as well as ongoing research engagements with the Ability Team at Microsoft Research. Current projects include developing audio-first representations of websites for smart speakers; understanding how perceptions of software developer job candidates with autism may impact hiring decisions; AI-based sign language recognition and translation as well as ongoing work on an ASL to English dictionary; and data-driven mental health apps.
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.
For most of us, the day seems to revolve around our phones: check email, read the news, pay bills, and get directions to the store. Mobile apps are essential in day-to-day life.
Unfortunately, many apps fail to be fully accessible to people with disabilities or those who rely on assistive technologies. As one blind app user noted, using an inaccessible app is “a constant feeling of being devalued. It doesn’t matter about the stupid button that I can’t press in that moment. It’s that it keeps happening. … And the message that I keep receiving is that the world just doesn’t value me.”
Anne Spencer Ross is a UW Ph.D. candidate in computer science, working on accessibility. She wrote about the state of app accessibility and shared ways that app users and developers can help make apps work for everyone.
UW faculty and staff affiliated with CREATE, UW Disability Studies and the UW D Center have received a grant from the Center for Leadership and Innovation in Medical Education (CLIME) to explore what it means to be an ally to people with disabilities. “This is an integral issue informing professional education in the medical fields as well as in design and engineering, says PI Heather Feldner. “I am most excited that this project has the potential to further the conversation about how an inclusive mindset can shape contemporary health professions education and practice. Accessibility and technology will be a big part of these conversations and the subsequent training material development. To be able to approach this project with the multidisciplinary perspectives of the CREATE team as a resource is a huge asset.”
April 2020.Kat Steele, CREATE Associate Director and the Albert S. Kobayashi Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering, received a 2020 Faculty Appreciation for Career Education & Training (FACET) award from appreciative students. Presented by the Career Center @ Engineering, the award recognizes faculty members who have positively impacted their career and professional development.
Four UW CREATE faculty have been named recipients of Google Faculty Research Awards. The grants, among 150 Google recently announced, support world-class technical research in computer science, engineering and related fields. Each award provides funding to support one graduate student for a year.
The goal of the awards is “to identify and strengthen long-term collaborative relationships with faculty working on problems that will impact how future generations use technology,” according to Google.
Jacob Wobbrock honored for improving touch-screen accessibility
Congratulations to Jacob O. Wobbrock, a founding co-director of CREATE, for his work with Shaun Kane, PhD ’11 and Jeffrey Bigham, PhD ’09 improving the accessibility of mobile technology.
Slide Rule addressed the challenge of navigating within a screen when mobile phones transitioned from physical buttons to touch screens. Their methods represented the first screen reader for touch screens, using simple gestures for navigation and tapping targets. These features have since become mainstream in commercial products.
Given the prevalence of touch screens in our society, the need to make them accessible to all people is still great, and we will continue to pursue that goal, along with the many other projects we are doing.
Jacob O. Wobbrock
As technology continues to advance, Wobbrock’s team continues to identify innovative methods for interaction that improve accessibility. Read more about the award and his recent research.
