Social Stories to Help Family Members with Autism: Lessons from Panama

April 6, 2026 For individuals with autism and their families, navigating social situations, especially new or unpredictable ones, can be difficult. Research led by CREATE faculty member Annuska Zolyomi has shown that families in Panama have used storytelling to help prepare their children with autism for social situations. Zolyomi’s research, in turn, has led to development of a therapeutic app built off the importance of storytelling in Panamanian culture. Not yet released, the Mystoria app uses what the developers call…

CHI 2026: Papers and Presentations on Accessibility

March 23, 2026 Accessibility-related papers, presentations, and workshops from CREATE researchers at CHI 2026, the ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. We appreciate your patience as we continue to update this page. Congratulations to CREATE associate director Jon E. Froehlich, who will be honored with a Societal Impact Award at the 2026 SIGCHI Conference in Barcelona! Papers Ability heuristics for conducting accessibility inspections Claire Mitchell, Judy Kong (Ph.D. student), Jesse Martinez (Ph.D. student), Sean Kane (Ph.D. graduate and CREATE advisory council…

A Study in Cross-Cultural Relationship Building and Community-Based Research

March 10, 2026 CREATE faculty member Annuska Zolyomi co-led a collaborative exploration of how technology could help autistic individuals and their families. Celebrating Neurodiversity: Ichi-go Ichi-e Symposium, held in Tokyo in 2023, brought together thought leaders in HCI research and autism communities from Japan, North America, and Europe to explore neurodiversity in the Japanese context. Zolyomi, an assistant professor in Computing & Software Systems at UW Bothell, is the lead writer on a paper about the symposium and outcomes from…

Kane, Jayant, Wobbrock, Ladner: 2025 SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award

March 6, 2026 A paper on mobile device accessibility and co-authored by CREATE leaders was honored with the 10-Year Lasting Impact Award at the International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’25). The 2009 ACM ASSETS paper, Freedom to roam: A study of mobile device adoption and accessibility for people with visual and motor disabilities, found that people with disabilities had to find ways to adapt to inaccessible technology. The team developed guidelines for more accessible and empowering…

Hackfest project for children with cerebral palsy goes on to win design awards

January 29, 2026 In 2024, students Lige Yang and Richard Li teamed up at the CREATE AI+Accessibility Hackfest to explore the concept of an AI tool that could monitor a person’s seated position, identify when they are in a posture that could cause injury or worsen an existing condition, and alert a caretaker with accurate, recommended corrections. Yang has continued developing the design. From hackfest idea submitted by a parent… The project idea was submitted by Max Smoot, the parent…

Hala Annabi to lead new UW Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment

October 21, 2025 The institute will bring together an interdisciplinary team of leading scholars, practitioners, and employers. Together they will work to build the capacity of the UW, Washington state, and the nation to create neuroinclusive employment opportunities and advance the career possibilities for neurodivergent people. Annabi is a leading scholar on neurodiversity and employment and is an associate professor in the Information School. Her work in this space includes the publication of a series of Neurodiversity @ Work Playbooks…

2025 Race, Disability and Technology Funded Research

September 22, 2025 We are happy to report that this year we received more applications for the RDT grants than in previous years. We also received more applications from outside of CREATE, possibly a sign of our increased outreach to and visibility on campus, and certainly an indication of the importance of this grant mechanism to research efforts across the university. Learn more The Race, Disability, and Technology Initiative Call for Proposals – Race, Disability, and Technology Tier I project:…

With new NIH funding, CREATE postdoc Bethany Sloane continues research for children with cerebral palsy, motor delays

September 15, 2025 Exploration and self-initiated mobility are known to support growth in learning, communication, social skills, and play. Yet, due to limited training, funding, or access to different types of devices, powered mobility devices are often underused in early intervention and pediatric therapy settings. Bethany Sloane’s research is focused on addressing these issues, to ensure that children under the age of three have opportunities to explore their environments and participate in daily life through mobility. She aims to create…

Blind and Low Vision Teens Join CREATE through YES2 Summer Internships

September 3, 2025 The Washington Department of Services for the Blind (DSB) program, called Youth Employment Solutions 2, provides experience, instruction, and paid 5-week summer internships. The students share a house, have job placements, and learn skills in using public transportation for travel to work sites. When ready, the students commute to their jobs independently. Statistics indicate that more than 70% of blind adults are either unemployed or under-employed, in jobs unequal to their education. However, evidence also indicates that…

ASSETS 2025: CREATE Papers, Presentations and Demos

August 27, 2025 CREATE faculty, students, and alumni will be well represented at ASSETS 2025 in Denver this fall. In addition to the papers and experience reports listed below, these CREATE members are part of the ASSETS 2025 Program Committee: CREATE associate director Leah Findlater and several CREATE postdoctoral researchers: Emma McDonnell (also a CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Jazette Johnson, Stacy Hsueh, and postdoc alum Tamanna Motahar. Awards CREATE’s impact on educating accessibility leaders is reflected by awards to our Ph.D….

Spring 2025 Research Showcase

The closing event for CREATE’s Community Day 2025, the Research Showcase was co-sponsored by HuskyADAPT. Spring 2025 Research Showcase projects Accessibility from Below Stacy Hsueh, Danielle Van Dusen, Anat Caspi, Jennifer Mankoff An ethnographic study on how low-income and racially diverse disabled families navigate government services to access the assistive technologies they need. Through extended fieldwork at a Seattle nonprofit, we uncovered community-based strategies of care, resistance, and improvisation that families use to reclaim agency. These strategies offer practical insights…

James Fogarty inducted into SIGCHI Academy

May 13, 2025 A central figure in Seattle’s human-computer interaction (HCI) community and beyond, Fogarty has made key contributions in accessibility, sensor-based interactions, interactive machine learning, and personal health informatics. He has played a pivotal role in founding and growing Design, Use, Build (DUB) — the UW’s cross-campus HCI alliance bringing together faculty, students, researchers and industry partners. “I am honored to be among the SIGCHI Academy Class of 2025,” Fogarty said. “I’m grateful for the amazing students and collaborators…

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

May 31, 2024 “What’s over there?” “How do I solve this math problem?” If you try asking a voice assistant (VA) like Siri or Alexa such questions you won’t get much information. While VAs are transforming human-computer interaction, they can’t see what you’re looking at or where you’re pointing. CREATE Ph.D. student Jaewook Lee has led an evaluation of GazePointAR, a fully-functional, context-aware VA for wearable augmented reality (AR) that uses eye gaze, pointing gestures, and conversation history to make…

Taskar project helps pedestrians find accessible routes all over Washington state

April 9, 2025 AccessMap was created in the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology (TCAT), which is led by CREATE associate director Anat Caspi. When it was launched in 2017, data was limited to parts of Seattle. Over the years, it has expanded to other cities near the Salish Sea, including Everett, Mount Vernon and Bellingham. “Not only are we including all sidewalks in Washington, which is huge, but we are engaging communities and planners in a massive effort to support data production and…

“Dude, what am I gonna do with a touchscreen? It’s crazy. I can’t feel anything.”

March 26, 2025 The iPhone 1 with a touchscreen — but no accessibility features for people who were blind — was released in September 2007. A few years later, Tim Paulding, who is blind, ran his fingers across the smooth glass screen of an iPod Touch for the first time. He was working as a counselor at a summer camp for blind kids outside Grand Rapids, Michigan, when a friend handed him the then top-of-the-line iPod. “I’m like, ‘Dude, what…

Kim Ingraham — engineering assistive robotic devices for people with disabilities

March 25, 2025 “Historically we have studied the way humans naturally move and then we have built robots that can mimic that movement,” says Ingraham, an assistant professor in the UW’s Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) department. “But when the human is wearing the robot and they’re both in the control loop at the same time, we have to figure out ways for those systems to successfully interact. Understanding and designing for the complexity of the interactions is one of…

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

March 17, 2025 A team of UW researchers has been working on increasing the accuracy and the finer social aspects of an assistive-feeding robot. ADA, for Assistive Dexterous Arm, consists of a robotic arm that can be affixed to a power wheelchair or other sturdy furniture and controlled by the user. Through a web app, the user decides what bite they want. To feed the person that bite, the system uses a camera to distinguish between foods on the plate,…

CHI 2025: CREATE Papers and Presentations

March 24, 2025 Papers, presentations, and workshops from CREATE researchers at CHI 2025, the ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. We appreciate your patience as we continue to update this page. The conference takes place April 26 – May 1 in Yokohama Japan. Awards and honors Congratulations to these 2025 ACM SIGCHI honorees: Papers A Stakeholder Value Framework for Augmentative and Alternative Communication Annuska Zolyomi (CREATE faculty), Varsha Koushik, Dinara Asyet, Linh H. Huynh. “A Tool for…

Funding and training opportunities – Winter 2025

January 21, 2025 We’ve rounded up some great opportunities for accessibility research, funding, and training. Most notably, deadlines are approaching for two CREATE grants: ACM CHI Workshop on Aging in Place call for participation The ACM CHI workshop on Technology Mediated Caregiving for Older Adults Aging in Place focuses on research around technological supports for caregiving, specific to older adults as they age and begin to experience cognitive changes. See also

Former CREATE postdoc Sasha Portnova talks about her experiences and inspirations

November 22, 2024 Dr. Alexandra (Sasha) Portnova, a postdoctoral researcher with CREATE in 2022-24, was interviewed about those experiences as a NIDILRR-funded fellow and about her work in rehabilitation research. In the National Rehabilitation Information Center interview, Portnova spoke about the value of the CREATE ARRT fellowship in transitioning from the overwhelming life as a Ph.D. student into a faculty career. Currently, Portnova is a research scientist in the Neuromechanics & Mobility Lab, directed by CREATE associate director Katherine M….