UW CREATE

Category: RESEARCH

News about research from CREATE faculty and partners and peers.

Proposed Federal Accessibility Standards: CREATE’s Guide to Reviewing and Commenting

A proposal for new digital accessibility guidelines for entities receiving federal funds was released for review by the U.S. Department of Justice on August 4, 2023. Anyone affected by these guidelines had until October 3, 2023 to comment.

  • CREATE’s official response, in collaboration with colleagues within the UW and at peer institutions, is posted on the DOJ site temporarily.
  • The response is available as an accessible and tagged PDF document (53 pages).
  • If you have any questions, reach out to CREATE at create-contact@uw.edu.

August 2023 announcement

Note that the comment period has ended.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) is proposing new requirements for digital accessibility for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Their goal is to provide public entities with clear and concrete standards for how to fulfill their obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act Title II Regulations. The goal of these new standards is to ensure public entities provide equal access to all services, programs, and activities that are provided via the web and mobile apps. 

These standards impact mobile apps, websites, and course materials created by and for government bodies, including public schools (K-12 and universities), and public services of all kinds.

Below, we have tried to summarize some of the most important aspects of the proposed rule and to explain them. However, in summarizing we have naturally emphasized things we think are important. Some of the topics the rule touches on that we summarize below include the proposed timeline for making digital content accessible; the proposed rules impacting K-12 and college/university course content; what standards should be met for digital content to be accessible for websites, apps, and live audio captioning; and how compliance should be assessed. 

Note that submitted comments are publicly available online at: DOJ-CRT-2023-0007 on www.regulations.gov.

roposed rule, but the DOJ has asked a number of very specific questions that you might want to comment on.

Notable questions, highlighted

We highlight several of the DOJ questions below, labeled with the Question # that the DOJ uses for them. You will see that we present these questions out of order – we present them in the order that made sense to us when we summarized this proposed rule. You can read the whole proposed rule and all the questions, in order, on the posting of Docket (DOJ-CRT-2023-0007) on www.regulations.gov. Sometimes we write Question to Consider before a question; these are questions we think you might want to comment on even though the DOJ did not ask about them.

Why submit comments?

The DOJ is still trying to decide exactly what the rule should say, how quickly public entities should improve digital accessibility, and what exceptions to allow. For example, the current rule states that course content posted on a password-protected website (such as a learning management system (LMS) like Canvas) does not have to be made accessible until a student with a disability needs access to that content. If a student registers for the course, or transfers into it, then the course content has to be made fully accessible to all disabilities by the start of the term or within 5 days (if the term has already started). In addition, the course needs to stay accessible over time.

If you agree with this, you might want to say so in your comments, because someone else might think this is unreasonable, and the DOJ should hear from both sides. But you might disagree, in which case you should also comment.  

What are the new standards about?

These standards affect web content and mobile apps. These are very broadly defined and include almost any digital content that is important to interacting with public entities. 

Web content is defined as “information or sensory experience that is communicated to the user by a web browser or other software. This includes text, images, sounds, videos, controls, animations, navigation menus, and documents.” It also includes things like web content posted on social media apps, to the extent possible (for example, if the app supports it, the public entity should add image descriptions to images it posts).

Question 1: The DOJ’s definition of “conventional electronic documents” consists of an exhaustive list of specific file types. Should the DOJ instead craft a more flexible definition that generally describes the types of documents that are covered or otherwise change the proposed definition, such as by including other file types (e.g., images or movies), or removing some of the listed file types?

Mobile applications, or “apps,” are defined as “software applications that are designed to be downloaded and run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.” A public entity may use a mobile app that someone else designed and built (an “external mobile app”); in this case it still needs to be accessible. 

Question 25: What types of external mobile apps, if any, do public entities use to offer their services, programs, and activities to members of the public, and how accessible are these apps? … should [these apps be exempt]? If so, should this exception expire after a certain time, and how would this exception impact persons with disabilities.

Timeline for making web content and mobile apps accessible

Almost any content or app that is important to interacting with a public entity has to be made accessible within 2 years of the date when the rule becomes official, regardless of whether a disabled person asks for it or is known to be using that content or app. For public entities that serve a small number of people (<50,000), the proposed deadline is 3 years. For example, a small county police department in a county with <50,000 people would have 3 years. However only truly independent entities qualify for this exception. For example, the same policy department in a county with >50,000 people would only have two years; similarly a small public school in a large county would only have two years.

If a public entity feels this would be too costly, under the proposed rule they must prove this and they still have to do as much as possible, “to the maximum extent possible” to support their disabled constituents.

Question 4: What compliance costs and challenges might small public entities face in conforming with this rule? … [do they have internal staff for addressing accessibility? If they have recently addressed accessibility, how much did that cost?]

Question 5: Should the DOJ adopt a different WCAG version or conformance level for small entities or a subset of small entities?

Exemptions

The new rule does include some exceptions, meaning it allows some content to be inaccessible. However, when a disabled person needs the inaccessible content, existing regulations implementing title II of the ADA may come into effect, typically requiring the content to be made accessible.

Exemptions

The new rule does include some exceptions, meaning it allows some content to be inaccessible. However, when a disabled person needs the inaccessible content, existing regulations implementing title II of the ADA may come into effect, typically requiring the content to be made accessible.

Archived and pre-existing non-web documents

The following exemptions are intended to reduce the burden of the new rule for large collections of rarely used documents:

  • Archived content not in active use
  • Pre-existing non-web documents

The DOJ has several questions about these exemptions (see Questions 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20) which relate to how such content is currently used, where it is posted, and how these exemptions would impact people with disabilities.

Course content

Generally speaking, course content (such as a public syllabus or handout) has to be made accessible. However, course content inside a password protected website such as a learning management system (for both K-12 schools and colleges/universities) is exempted if the content is only available specifically to admitted students enrolled in the relevant course (and disabled parents, in the case of K-12 materials). 

Once an institution knows, or should have known that a student (or, for K-12 courses, parent) with a disability is enrolled in the course, “all existing course content must be made fully accessible by the [start of the academic term] for that course… New content added throughout the term for the course must also comply… at the time it is added to the website.”

Under today’s interpretation of the ADA, transferring to a course during the add/drop period or from a waitlist often means that the course is less accessible. The DOJ guidelines address this, requiring in these cases that course material is made accessible within five business days of the student’s enrollment. The DOJ also requires “auxiliary aids and services… that enable the student with a disability to participate” while a course is being made accessible. Notably, the relevant material would need to be fully accessible to all disabilities, “not merely the criteria related to that student or parent’s disability.“

Importantly, the obligation to make the course content accessible is “ongoing for the duration of the course” and “as long as that content is available to students on the password-protected course website.” It is not clear whether this applies to future offerings of the same course, as typically use of an LMS involves creating a “new” password-protected site for each offering.

The DOJ has a lengthy analysis of tangible and intangible benefits of this ruling, as well as expected costs. They estimate that “By the end of year four (two years after postsecondary schools begin to remediate course content), 96 percent of courses offered by public four-year and postgraduate institutions and 90 percent of courses offered by community colleges will have been remediated. They further estimate that postsecondary institutions will finish remediation on their own to preempt requests in the following year.” They have similar estimates about K-12 education.

Question to consider: Should the “the duration of a course” apply to a single offering of a course for a single term, or all offerings of that course in all terms (even if a separate LMS site, with a separate password, was created for each offering)? How might this impact the likelihood that most courses are fully accessible within four years?

Question to Consider: Do  you agree that the proposed rule will increase course accessibility to include 96% of courses? How might the variable representation of people with disabilities across fields impact this? For example, people with disabilities are particularly under-represented in STEM fields, where diagrams and math equations are often particularly inaccessible. What could be changed about the proposed rule to make this prediction more likely to come true?

The DOJ also has several questions; we highlight some of them below. We have combined the questions for K-12 and post-secondary educational institutions by referring to [public educational institutions] since the primary difference is that parents with disabilities trigger the need to make documents in the case of K-12 education only. 

Question 27 & 36: How difficult would it be for [public educational institutions] to comply with this rule in the absence of this exception?

Question 28 & 37: What would the impact of this exception be on people with disabilities?

Question 33 & 42: How long would it take to make course content available on a public entity’s password-protected or otherwise secured website for a particular course accessible, and does this vary based on the type of course? Do students need access to course content before the first day of class? How much delay in accessing online course content can a student reasonably overcome in order to have an equal opportunity to succeed in a course, and does the answer change depending on the point in the academic term that the delay occurs?

Question 35 & 44: Should the DOJ consider an alternative approach, such as requiring that all newly posted course content be made accessible on an expedited time frame, while adopting a later compliance date for remediating existing content?

This includes third party content. For example, a website for practicing math problems provided, if required to complete coursework, would need to be accessible. The rules do not specifically mention textbooks. However the DOJ asks:

Question 26: Are there particular issues relating to the accessibility of digital books and textbooks that the DOJ should consider in finalizing this rule? Are there particular issues that the DOJ should consider regarding the impact of this rule on libraries?

Question to Consider: Has textbook accessibility been a barrier to accessing courses? What are some examples of problems you’ve encountered? How common are these problems? What could help?

Other exemptions

The DOJ also exempts linked 3rd party information (if it is not providing a direct service) and individualized, password-protected documents (such as personal utility bills). However it specifies that if these documents have deadlines associated with them, and are not accessible, they need to adjust their deadlines “to ensure that a person with a disability has equal access to its services, programs, or activities.” The DOJ asks about whether proper processes are in place:

Question to Consider: How might a delay in receiving an accessible document affect you? For example, could it affect whether you receive care services, money for food, or healthcare services that could cause harm if delayed? If you think this is a concern, what would be a reasonable deadline for receiving these documents?

Question 46: Do public entities have adequate systems for receiving notification that an individual with a disability requires access to an individualized, password-protected conventional electronic document? What kinds of burdens do these notification systems place on individuals with disabilities and how easy are these systems to access? Should the DOJ consider requiring a particular system for notification or a particular process or timeline that entities must follow when they are on notice that an individual with a disability requires access to such a document?

How is “accessible” defined?

The ADA has always included digital accessibility. However, a lack of specific standards in the past has left public entities to define for themselves what compliance looks like. The result has been a lack of consistent attention to accessibility. According to the DOJ, “voluntary compliance … has been insufficient in providing access.”

Now, the DOJ is requiring public entities to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)version 2.1, at the AA level. This is a carefully tested web standard which has recently been expanded to touch on mobile accessibility needs as well. 

Question 3: Are there technical standards or performance standards other than WCAG 2.1 that the Department should consider? … If so, what is a reasonable time frame for State and local compliance with WCAG 2.2 and why? Is there any other standard that the Department should consider, especially in light of the rapid pace at which technology changes?

The DOJ notes that “the Access Board’s section 508 standards include additional requirements applicable to mobile apps that are not in WCAG 2.1 [including]: interoperability requirements to ensure that a mobile app does not disrupt a device’s assistive technology for persons with disabilities (e.g., screen readers for persons who are blind or have low vision); requirements for mobile apps to follow preferences on a user’s phone such as settings for color, contrast, and font size; and requirements for caption controls and audio description controls that enable users to adjust caption and audio description functions.“

Question 8: Is WCAG 2.1 Level AA the appropriate accessibility standard for mobile apps? Should the Department instead adopt another accessibility standard or alternative for mobile apps, such as the requirements from section 508 discussed above?

The DOJ also notes that this includes captioning of “live audio,” such as in real-time presentations. They note that many meetings have moved online since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, making live audio captioning “even more critical for individuals with certain types of disabilities to participate fully in civic life.” Proper live audio captioning includes speaker identification as well as accurate transcription of spoken text, sound effects, and other significant audio. Live audio captioning of this sort cannot be automated, and the DOJ is concerned about costs. They ask:

Question 13: Should the Department consider a different compliance date for the captioning of live-audio content in synchronized media or exclude some public entities from the requirement?

Question 14: What types of live-audio content do public entities and small public entities post? What has been the cost for providing live-audio captioning?

Finally, the DOJ notes that “WCAG 2.1 can be interpreted to permit the development of two separate websites—one for individuals with relevant disabilities and another for individuals without relevant disabilities—even when doing so is unnecessary and when users with disabilities would have a better experience using the main web page.” They rightly point out that this raises “concerns about user experience, segregation of users with disabilities, unequal access to information, and maintenance”. Thus the proposed rule explicitly states that parallel development of a separate website, document or app is “permissible only where it is not possible to make websites and web content directly accessible due to technical limitations (e.g., technology is not yet capable of being made accessible) or legal limitations (e.g., web content is protected by copyright).”  They go on to ask:

Question 49: Would allowing [a separate alternate version of a website, document, or app] due to technical or legal limitations result in individuals with disabilities receiving unequal access to a public entity’s services, programs, and activities?

How will compliance be measured?

The DOJ has many questions about the best way to measure compliance. The DOJ acknowledges that a public entity might reasonably not be in full compliance with all of WCAG 2.1’s AA standards at all times. This is because web content changes frequently, assessments may not always agree, and may include thousands of pages of content, making compliance more difficult than ensuring access to, say, “a town hall that is renovated once a decade…. The Department also believes that slight deviations from WCAG 2.1 Level AA may be more likely to occur without having a detrimental impact on access than is the case with the ADA Standards. Additionally, it may be easier for an aggrieved individual to find evidence of noncompliance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA than noncompliance with the ADA Standards, given the availability of many free testing tools and the fact that public entities’ websites can be accessed from almost anywhere.” 

They discuss several alternatives that could allow for the necessity of slight deviations and short periods of noncompliance while still promoting high compliance overall, including a percentage-based standard (which may be difficult to implement, and may need to weight different aspects of WCAG 2.1 differently to achieve equity); a standard based on policies for feedback, testing and remediation (which may be inconsistently applied); or “organizational maturity” meaning the organization can show it has a robust accessibility program in place (which may not translate to full accessibility or compliance). They solicit commentary on compliance: 

The DOJ asks what evidence an allegation of noncompliance requires (Question 50); Whether organizational feedback practices, testing policies, remediation practices, or organizational maturity should matter in assessing compliance (Questions 51, 55, 58). The DOJ also asks about what specific feedback practices, testing policies, remediation policies, and level of organizational maturity are needed (Questions 52, 53, 54, 59). They also ask:

Question 62: Should the Department address the different level of impact that different instances of nonconformance with a technical standard might have on the ability of people with disabilities to access the services, programs, and activities that a public entity offers via the web or a mobile app? If so, how?

To conclude, the DOJ’s proposed rule covers a number of topics that are of great importance to people with disabilities. We strongly urge you to comment on the rule.

If you have any questions, reach out to CREATE at create-contact@uw.edu.

CREATE Open Source Projects Awarded at Web4All

July 6, 2023

CREATE researchers shone this spring at the 2023 Web4All 2023 conference that, in part, seeks to “make the internet more accessible to the more than one billion people who struggle to interact with digital content each day due to neurodivergence, disability or other impairments.” Two CREATE-funded open source projects won accolades.

Best Technical Paper award:
Understanding and Improving Drilled-Down Information Extraction from Online Data Visualizations for Screen-Reader Users

Authors: Ather Sharif, Andrew Mingwei Zhang, CREATE faculty member Katharina Reinecke, and CREATE Associate Director Jacob O. Wobbrock

Built on prior research to develop taxonomies of information sought by screen-reader users to interact with online data visualizations, the team’s research used these taxonomies to extend the functionality of VoxLens—an open-source multi-modal system that improves the accessibility of data visualizations—by supporting drilled-down information extraction. They assessed the performance of their VoxLens enhancements through task-based user studies with 10 screen-reader and 10 non-screen-reader users. Their enhancements “closed the gap” between the two groups by enabling screen-reader users to extract information with approximately the same accuracy as non-screen-reader users, reducing interaction time by 22% in the process.

Accessibility Challenge Delegates’ Award:
UnlockedMaps: A Web-Based Map for Visualizing the Real-Time Accessibility of Urban Rail Transit Stations

Authors: Ather Sharif, Aneesha Ramesh, Qianqian Yu, Trung-Anh H. Nguyen, and Xuhai Xu

Ather Sharif’s work on another project, UnlockedMaps, was honored with the Accessibility Challenge Delegates’ Award. The paper details a web-based map that allows users to see in real time how accessible rail transit stations are in six North American cities, including Seattle, Toronto, New York and the Bay Area. UnlockedMaps shows whether stations are accessible and if they are currently experiencing elevator outages. Their work includes a public website that enables users to make informed decisions regarding their commute and an open source API that can be used by developers, disability advocates, and policy makers for a variety of purposes, including shedding light on the frequency of elevator outages and their repair times to identify the disparities between neighborhoods in a given city.

Read more

Accessible Technology Research Showcase – Spring 2023

June 30, 2023

Poster session in progress, with 9 or so posters on easels in view and student presenters talking to attendees.

In June 2023, CREATE and HuskyADAPT co-hosted a showcase — and celebration — of outstanding UW research on accessible technology. The showcase featured poster presentations, live demonstrations by our faculty, students, and researchers and was altogether vibrant and exciting. Over 100 attendees viewed 25 projects, presentations, and posters.

Congratulations and appreciation to CREATE Engagement and Partnerships Manager Kathleen Quin Voss and HuskyADAPT Student Executive Chair Mia Hoffman for putting on an amazing research showcase!

Read Project Descriptions

Students stand by their poster for "Wheelchair Basketball Transport."
Attendees watch a toddler demonstrate a ride-on toy adapted for mobility.
Students stand by their project table with a prototype for an adaptable bicycle.
Students stand by their poster for "An Interactive Mat for Inclusive Gross Motor Play."
Students stand by their poster for a wireless switch to control an adapted interactive toy.
Katherine Steele and a student kneel by an adapted ride-on toy.
A student presents her poster for Blocks4All, a coding learning tool for visually impaired youth.
A student describes a poster to an attendee
A student describes a poster to an attendee
A student describes a poster to attendees
A conversation in front of a student poster with a demonstration wheelchair.
Students prepare their project table
Students stand by their poster with two adaptable ride-on toys.
A student stands by a project poster with a remotely operated robot for demonstration.
An online display/poster and adaptable ride-on toy being demonstrated.

Accessible card games: Switch scanning-enabled card holder and dispenser

Project lead: Katrina Ma

While playing card games, individuals with motor disabilities or limited hand and finger use experience a lack of confidentiality, frustration having to depend on a caregiver, and difficulty connecting with other players. Our team aims to create a simple, universal, user-friendly, and affordable device that allows individuals with motor disabilities to independently hold and play cards.

Our idea is to incorporate switch-scanning technology in a device that can hold up to twelve cards and allow the user to dispense a chosen card to other players at the click of a switch. The device has a universal jack to accommodate users' own switches.

Accessisteer

Project lead: Michelle Jin

In order to provide a comfortable bike-riding experience to a child with hemiplegia, our mission is to create seat, handlebar, and stability modifications to a commercially available bicycle. This allows for cycling without the need for external assistance.

Adapted Ride-on Car+

Project lead: Mia Hoffman

Early self-initiated mobility is fundamental to a young child’s development. Adapted ride-on cars (ROCs) are an affordable alternative mobility option for young children with disabilities. We will be investigating the impact that control types has on a child’s directional control and engagement during play using ROCs that are joystick-controlled and manually steered.

Current ROCs depend on manual steering, which results in steering being difficult for a young child, especially with limited motor function. Modifications for ROCs that allow for joystick control are now becoming available, allowing the child to use a joystick for steering. We will be investigating the impact that control types has on a child’s directional control and engagement during play using ROCs that are joystick-controlled and manually steered. To quantify the child’s device interaction, we have developed a custom data logger, the ROC+, using an Ardunio Nano 33 IoT. The data logger measures switch activation for the traditional ROC, steering wheel rotation or joystick position, wheel rotation, acceleration, and angular velocity. We can also measure when an adult has taken control of the device using a remote control. The ROC+ will be used in a forthcoming study to quantify a child’s driving ability and the relationship between a parent and a child while a child is learning to use a powered mobility device.

Blocks4All: A screen reader and switch accessible block-based programming environment

Project lead: Yitong Shan

Blocks4All is a block-based programming environment for all children including those with disabilities. It is accessible with VoiceOver, Switch Control, and Voice Control. Children can learn beginning programming concepts by placing blocks on the app to control the Dash robot.

Chronically Under-Addressed: Considerations for HCI Accessibility Practice with Chronically Ill People

Project lead: Kelly Mack and Emma McDonnell

Accessible design and technology could support the large and growing group of people with chronic illnesses. However, human computer interactions (HCI) has largely approached people with chronic illnesses through a lens of medical tracking or treatment rather than accessibility. We describe and demonstrate a framework for designing technology in ways that center the chronically ill experience.

First, we identify guiding tenets: 1) treating chronically ill people not as patients but as people with access needs and expertise, 2) recognizing the way that variable ability shapes accessibility considerations, and 3) adopting a theoretical understanding of chronic illness that attends to the body. We then illustrate these tenets through autoethnographic case studies of two chronically ill authors using technology. Finally, we discuss implications for technology design, including designing for consequence-based accessibility, considering how to engage care communities, and how HCI research can engage chronically ill participants in research.

Cultivating inclusive play and maker mindset among neurodiverse children in a preschool classroom

Project lead: Maitraye Das

Young neurodivergent children need equitable opportunities to co-engage in high quality learning activities alongside neurotypical peers from early childhood. While there has been critical movement toward increasing participation of neurodivergent children in classrooms, much of this work involve school-age kids (6 years or over), leaving open questions around how neurodivergent preschoolers of age 3-5 years might engage in collaborative play with and around technologies.

We aim to understand whether and how programmable toy robots (e.g., KIBO) can foster inclusive play and maker mindset among neurodiverse children in preschool classrooms.

We partnered with the Experimental Education Unit (EEU) at the UW Haring Center. We conducted our research in two preschool classrooms, each including 16 children between the ages of 3-5. Six to eight children in each classroom have neurodevelopmental conditions including autism, developmental delays, and speech difficulties. Our research activities center around supporting children in making and interacting with the toy robot called KIBO. Preliminary findings show that through careful and accessible adaptation of activities, KIBO could enhance understanding of cause of effect, trial and error, enthusiasm for making and imagination, and sense of collaboration (and at times competition and negotiation) among neurodiverse groups of children.

Design Principles for Robot-Assisted Feeding in Social Contexts

Project lead: Amal Nanavati

Social dining is a meaningful and culturally significant experience. For 1.8 million Americans with motor impairments who cannot eat without assistance, challenges restrict them from enjoying this social ritual. In this work, we identify the needs of participants with motor impairments during social dining and how robot-assisted feeding can address them. 

Following a community-based participatory research method, we worked with a community researcher with motor impairments throughout this study. We contribute (a) insights into how a robot can help overcome challenges in social dining and (b) design principles for creating robot-assisted feeding systems to facilitate meaningful social dining.

Easier or Harder, Depending on Who the Hearing Person Is”: Codesigning Videoconferencing Tools for Small Groups with Mixed Hearing Status

Project lead: Emma McDonnell

With improvements in automated speech recognition and increased use of videoconferencing, real-time captioning has changed significantly. This shift toward broadly available but less accurate captioning invites exploration of the role hearing conversation partners play in shaping the accessibility of a conversation to d/Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) captioning users.

While recent work has explored DHH individuals’ videoconferencing experiences with captioning, we focus on established groups’ current practices and priorities for future tools to support more accessible online conversations.

Our study consists of three codesign sessions, conducted with four groups (17 participants total, 10 DHH, 7 hearing). We found that established groups crafted social accessibility norms that met their relational contexts. We also identify promising directions for future captioning design, including the need to standardize speaker identification and customization, opportunities to provide behavioral feedback during a conversation, and ways that videoconferencing platforms could enable groups to set and share norms.

The Effect of Increased Sensory Feedback from Neuromodulation and Exoskeleton use on Ankle Co-contraction in Children with Cerebral Palsy

Project lead: Charlotte Caskey

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) have altered gait that limits mobility through the activation of antagonistic muscle pairs simultaneously. This study will quantify changes in muscle co-contraction during walking with two devices that increase sensory feedback.

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) have altered gait that limits mobility. One hallmark of CP gait is increased muscle co-contraction, or the activation of antagonistic muscle pairs at the same time.This may contribute to increased energy expenditure and reduced physical activity for children with CP. Amplifying sensory feedback may help combat this by prompting more refined motor control and lead to reduced co-contraction with CP. The purpose of this study is to quantify changes in muscle co-contraction during walking with two devices that increase sensory feedback: an ankle exoskeleton with audiovisual feedback (Exo) and transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (tSCS). The Exo provides increased haptic feedback targeting external sensory information while tSCS boost neural communication internally. We hypothesized that co-contraction would decrease when walking with spinal stimulation and the ankle exoskeleton. We compared changes in co-contraction of the biceps femoris and rectus femoris (BF/RF) and the tibialis anterior and soleus (TA/Sol)  with 1) no devices, 2) Exo only, 3) tSCS only, and 4) Exo+tSCS for 5 children with CP. We found that tSCS only led to the greatest reduction in TA/Sol co-contraction but Exo only and Exo+tSCS led to the greatest reductions in BF/RF co-contraction. This work is fundamental in helping us understand how children with CP respond within a single session of using these devices and how the devices might be used for longer term rehabilitation.

The Effects of Weakness, Contracture, and Altered Control on Walking Energetics During Crouch Gait

Project lead: Elijah Kuska

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the result of a pediatric brain injury that primarily alters control. However, individuals with CP often develop progressive, secondary impairments like weakness and contracture. Multi-modal impairments-that of control and morphology-impose complex restrictions on mobility and elevate energetics. This study seeks to utilize modeling, simulation, and machine learning to parse the relative effects of multi-modal impairments during non-disabled and CP gait, identifying the primary impairment driving elevated energetics.

Evaluating Customization of Remote Tele-operation Interfaces for Assistive Robots

Project lead: Vinitha Ranganeni

Mobile manipulator platforms, like the Stretch RE1 robot, make the promise of in-home robotic assistance feasible. For people with severe physical limitations, like those with quadriplegia, the ability to tele-operate these robots themselves means that they can perform physical tasks they cannot otherwise do themselves, thereby increasing their level of independence.

In order for users with physical limitations to operate these robots, their interfaces must be accessible and cater to the specific needs of all users. As physical limitations vary amongst users, it is difficult to make a single interface that will accommodate all users. Instead, such interfaces should be customizable to each individual user.

In this work we explore the value of customization of a browser-based interface for tele-operating the Stretch RE1 robot. More specifically, we evaluate the usability and effectiveness of a customized interface in comparison to the default interface configurations from prior work. We present a user study involving participants with motor impairments (N=10) and without motor impairments, who could serve as a caregiver, (N=13) that use the robot to perform mobile manipulation tasks in a real kitchen environment.

Our study demonstrates that no single interface configuration satisfies all users' needs and preferences. Users perform better when using the customized interface for navigation, but not for manipulation due to higher complexity of learning to manipulate through the robot. All participants are able to use the robot to complete all tasks and participants with motor impairments believe that having the robot in their home would make them more independent.

Exploring Virtual Whiteboard Sessions in Mixed Hearing Environments

Project lead: Shaun Kalweit

Traditional ideation processes have been challenged due to current hybrid work environments and reliance on telecommunication tools. Our sponsor, Microsoft Teams, offers a platform for collaborative work, including brainstorming with whiteboards. However, these virtual sessions pose accessibility issues for D/deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) individuals. This project aims to address the challenges faced by DHH users of Microsoft Teams Whiteboard during remote meetings and develop a solution to enhance inclusivity and accessibility.

GoBabyGo Modification

Project lead: Nadia Sanchez

The student engineers on this team will redesign a joystick control modification to a ride-on car for young children as well as develop an easy-to-follow assembly manual in order to make it easier for the GoBabyGo volunteers to assemble.

How Do People with Limited Movement Personalize Upper-Body Gestures?

Project lead: Momona Yamagami

Biosignal interfaces that use electromyography sensors, accelerometers, and other biosignals as inputs provide promise to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. However, generalized models that are not personalized to the individual’s abilities, body sizes, and skin tones may not perform well. Individualized interfaces that are personalized to the individual and their abilities could significantly enhance accessibility.

In this work, I discuss how personalized electromyography gesture interfaces can be personalized to each user's abilities and characterize personalized gestures for 25 participants with upper-body motor impairments. As biosignal interfaces become more commonly available, it is important to ensure that such interfaces have high performance across a wide spectrum of users.

HuskyADAPT: Switch Kit

Project lead: Jordan Huang

The current switch kit has concerns regarding accessibility, safety, and durability. Our project seeks to modify and enhance a switch kit that enables children with disabilities to engage in collaborative play, providing a safe, enjoyable, and inclusive experience for all.

An Interactive Mat for Inclusive Gross Motor Play

Project lead: Sabrina Lin

Our mission is to design an accessible solution that will accommodate diverse needs and encourage inclusivity, in addition to co-creating other educational models to establish an equitable learning environment for students with and without disabilities at the Experimental Education Unit, an inclusive early childhood school community associated with the University of Washington. We focused on creating an interactive sensory mat for children to play “Floor is Lava,” encouraging them to further develop their gross motor skills and play collaboratively.

Notably Inaccessible – Understanding Data Science Notebook (In)Accessibility

Project lead: Venkatesh Potluri 

Computational notebooks, tools that facilitate storytelling through exploration, data analysis, and information visualization, have become the widely accepted standard in the data science community both in academia and industry. While there is extensive research that investigates how data scientists use these notebooks, identifies their pain points, and enables collaborative data science practices, very little is known about the various accessibility barriers experienced by blind and visually impaired (BVI) notebook users.

We present findings from a large scale analysis of 100K Jupyter notebooks, showing that BVI notebook users may experience accessibility barriers due to authoring practices, data representations in these notebooks, and the incapability of  tools and infrastructures that are used to work with these notebooks. we make recommendations to improve accessibility of the artifacts of a notebook, suggest authoring practices, and propose changes to infrastructure to make notebooks accessible.

A Pilot Study of Sidewalk Equity in Seattle Using Crowdsourced Sidewalk Assessment Data

Project lead: Chu Li

We examine the potential of using large-scale open crowdsourced sidewalk data from Project Sidewalk to study the distribution and condition of sidewalks in Seattle, WA. While potentially noisier than professionally gathered sidewalk datasets, crowdsourced data enables large, cross-regional studies that would be otherwise expensive and difficult to manage.

As an initial case study, we examine spatial patterns of sidewalk quality in Seattle and their relationship to racial diversity, income level, built density, and transit modes. We close with a reflection on our approach, key limitations, and opportunities for future work.

Quantifying device and environment exploration during powered mobility use in toddlers

Project lead: Nicole Zaino

Toddlers with mobility disabilities and delays require the use of technology to access self-initiated mobility at an early age which is critical for development, mobility, and social interaction. My work is on investigating the toddler-device-environment relationship and interaction for toddlers learning how to navigate and explore with a pediatric powered mobility device (Permobil Explorer Mini).

Sports Chair

Project lead: Yusuke Maruo

Our mission is to create a towing device that significantly improves the Seattle Adaptive Sports Center’s basketball athletes’ ability to transport their sports chair using their daily chair.

Steering Modifications to Support On-time Powered Mobility Use

Project lead: Kate Bokowy

Adapted ride-on cars are a great mobility learning tool for young kids with disabilities, but they can be hard to steer. We have created 3D-printed steering modifications to make it easier for a child to turn the steering wheel using different modalities.

Toward Open and Shared Pedestrian Path Network Mapping and Assessment at Scale

Project lead: Ricky Zhang

Manual mapping of pedestrian path networks is often a challenging task due to the substantial data requirements and potential errors. In response, we’ve developed AI-powered automated tools that integrate diverse types of globally-available data for proactive generation and analysis of pedestrian path and network data, with a keen focus on accessibility considerations. The resulting pedestrian path network data is represented in a standardized format per the OpenSidewalks data schema, making it readily usable in downstream routing and analytic applications.

Wireless Switch for Accessible Play

Project lead: Spencer Madrid

Our mission is to create a viable wireless switch that is more affordable than commercially available switches and is adapted to increase accessibility in any situation.

Classification of light rail stations using semantic segmentation

Project lead: Anat Caspi

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.

User-informed, robot-assisted social dining for people with motor impairments

June 1, 2023

A team of Allen School robotics researchers has published a paper on the finer aspects of robot-assisted dining with friends. “A meal should be memorable, and not for a potential faux pas from the machine,” notes co-author Patrícia Alves-Oliveira. Supported by a CREATE Student minigrant and in the spirit of “nothing about us without us,” they are working with the Tyler Schrenk Foundation to address the design of robot-assisted feeding systems that facilitate meaningful social dining experiences.

The team is led by Ph.D. student Amal Nanavati, postdoc Patrícia Alves-Oliveira and includes CREATE faculty member Maya Cakmak and community researcher Tyler Schrenk.

Teleconference screenshot of 4 people: Patrícia Alves-Oliveira (top left), Amal Nanavati (top right), Tyler Schrenk (bottom left), and an anonymous participant (bottom right)

Learn more:

Rethinking Disability and Advancing Access

UW CREATE collaborates toward a world with fewer problems and more solutions for people of all abilities.

The UW College of Engineering showcased CREATE’s mission, moonshots, and collaborative successes in a feature article, Rethinking disability and advancing access, written by Alice Skipton. The article is reproduced and reformatted here.

A person sitting in a wheelchair looking at a phone while two people are looking over her shoulder at the phone.
CREATE researchers and partners work on high-impact projects — such as those focused on mobility and on mobile device accessibility — advancing the inclusion and participation for people with disabilities.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in four people in the United States lives with a disability.

“The presence of disability is everywhere. But how disability has been constructed, as an individual problem that needs to be fixed, leads to exclusion and discrimination.”

Heather Feldner, UW Medicine assistant professor in Rehabilitation Medicine and a CREATE associate director

The construct also ignores the reality that people’s physical and mental abilities continually change. Examples include pregnancy, childbirth, illness, injuries, accidents and aging. Additionally, assuming that people all move, think or communicate in a certain way fails to recognize diverse bodies and minds. By ignoring this reality, technology and access solutions have traditionally been limited and limiting.

UW CREATE logo with icon of person with prosthetic arm holding a lightbulb and Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences, University of Washington

UW CREATE, a practical, applied research center, exists to counter this problem by making technology accessible and the world accessible through technology. Launched in early 2020 with support from Microsoft, the Center connects research to industry and the community.

On campus, it brings together accessibility experts and work-in-progress from across engineering, medicine, disability studies, computer science, information science and more, with the model always open to new collaborators. 

“Anyone interested in working in the area of accessible technology is invited to become part of CREATE,” says Jacob O. Wobbrock, a professor in the UW Information School and one of the founders and co-director of the Center.

Shooting for the moon

A toddler-aged child in a ride-on toy gaining mobility to explore other toys, accompanied by a researcher.
CREATE is partnering with UW I-LABS to explore how accessibility impacts young children’s development, identity and agency. Their study uses the only powered mobility device available in the U.S. designed for children one to three years old. Photo courtesy of UW CREATE.

“We have an amazing critical mass at UW of faculty doing accessibility research,” says Jennifer Mankoff, a professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and another founder and co-director of CREATE. “There’s also a lot of cross-talk with Microsoft, other technology leaders, and local and national community groups. CREATE wants to ensure people joining the workforce know about accessibility and technology and that the work they do while they are at UW directly and positively impacts the disability community.” The Center’s community and corporate partnerships approach increases creativity and real-world impact.

The concept of moonshots — technology breakthroughs resulting from advances in space exploration — offers a captivating way of thinking about the potential of CREATE’s research. The Center currently has four research moonshots for addressing technological accessibility problems. One focuses on how accessibility impacts young children’s development, identity and agency and includes a mobility and learning study with the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) that employs the only powered mobility device available in the U.S. market specifically designed for children one to three years old. Another looks more broadly at mobility indoors and outdoors, such as sidewalk and transit accessibility. A third seeks ways to make mobile and wearable devices more accessible along with the apps people use every day to access such essentials as banking, gaming, transportation and more. A fourth works toward addressing access, equity and inclusion for multiply marginalized people.

“CREATE wants to ensure people joining the workforce know about accessibility and technology and that the work they do while they are at UW directly and positively impacts the disability community.”

— Jennifer Mankoff, founder and co-director of CREATE

For CREATE, advancing these moonshots isn’t just about areas where technologies already exist, like improving an interface to meet more people’s needs. It’s about asking questions and pushing research to address larger issues and inequities. “In certain spaces, disabled people are overrepresented, like in the unhoused or prison populations, or in health-care settings,” Mankoff says. “In others, they are underrepresented, such as in higher education, or simply overlooked. For example, disabled people are more likely to die in disaster situations because disaster response plans often don’t include them. We need to ask how technology contributes to these problems and how it can be part of the solution.”

Broader problem-solving abilities

For even greater impact, CREATE has situated these research moonshots within a practical framework for change that involves education initiatives, translation work and research funding. Seminars, conversations, courses, clubs and internship opportunities all advance the knowledge and expertise of the next generation of accessibility leaders. Translation work ensures that ideas get shaped and brought to life by community stakeholders and through collaborations with UW entities like the TASKAR Center for Accessible Technology, HuskyADAPT and the UW Disability Studies Program, as well as through collaborations with industry leaders like Microsoft, Google and Meta. CREATE’s research funding adds momentum by supporting education, translation and direct involvement of people with disabilities.

Related story:
Sidewalk Equity

A person in wheelchair and another standing person at a city sidewalk

Engineering and computer science researchers seek to make digital wayfinding more equitable and accessible to more people.

Nicole Zaino, a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student participating in CREATE’s early childhood mobility technology research, describes the immense benefits of having her education situated in the context of CREATE. “It’s broadened my research and made me a better engineer,” she says. She talks about the critical importance of end-user expertise, like the families participating in the mobility and learning study. Doing collaborative research and taking classes in other disciplines gives her more insights into intersecting issues. That knowledge and new vocabulary inform her work because she can search out research from different fields she otherwise wouldn’t have known about.

More equity advocates

At the same time, Zaino’s lived experience with her disability also broadens her perspective and enhances her research. She became interested in her current field when testing out new leg braces and seeing other assistive technology on the shelves at the clinic. For Mankoff, it was the reverse. She worked in the field and then experienced disability when diagnosed with Lyme disease, something she’s incorporated into her research. Wobbrock got a front-row seat to mobility and accessibility challenges when he severely herniated his L5-S1 disc and couldn’t sit down for two years. For Feldner, although she studied disability academically as a physical therapist and in disability studies, first-hand experiences came later in her career when she became a disability advocate for one of her children and a parent. At CREATE, more than 50% of those involved have some lived experience with disability. This strengthens the Center by bringing a diversity of perspectives and first-hand knowledge about how assumptions often get in the way of progress. 

closeup image of a smartphone with many small app icons.jpg

Seeking to push progress further on campus, CREATE has an initiative on research at the intersection of race, disability and technology with the Allen School, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Population Health Initiative, the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Office of the ADA Coordinator. 

CDC statistics show that the number of people experiencing a disability is higher when examined through the lens of race and ethnicity. With events and an open call for proposals, the initiative seeks increased research and institutional action in higher education, health care, artificial intelligence, biased institutions and more. 

“If we anticipate that people don’t conform to certain ability assumptions, we can think ahead,” says Wobbrock. “What would that mean for a particular technology design? It’s a longstanding tenant of accessibility research that better access for some people results in better access for all people.”

 

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By supporting UW CREATE, you can help make technology accessible and make the world accessible through technology.

Donate to CREATE

 

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.

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

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 »

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inspired by CREATE’s Kat Steele and the Steele Lab

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

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

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

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

Large-Scale Analysis Finds Many Mobile Apps Are Inaccessible

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full Research Highlight.

CREATE becomes a principal sponsor of HuskyADAPT

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

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

Sign up for HuskyADAPT’s newsletter

HuskyADAPT logo, with 3 heaxagons containing icons of tools, people and vehicles.

Ga11y improves accessibility of automated GIFs for visually impaired users

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

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

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

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

Part of this work was funded by CREATE.

VoxLens allows screen-reader users to interact with data visualizations

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more

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

Findlater and co-authors receive 2020 Best Paper award for study of Voice Assistants by Older Adults

The Association for Computing Machinery announced the 2020 Best Paper Award goes to Use of Intelligent Voice Assistants by Older Adults with Low Technology Use, co-authored by CREATE associate director Leah Findlater, Alisha Pradhan and Amanda Lazar.

The team conducted a 3-week field deployment of the Amazon Echo Dot in the homes of seven older adults to understand how older, infrequent users of technology perceive and use voice assistants. They observed consistent usage for finding health-related information, highlighting concerns about credibility of information with this new interaction medium.

Headshot of Leah Findlater, smiling warmly. She is a white woman with brown hair.

Leah Findlater, CREATE Associate Director

And while voice-based interaction appeared to be easy to learn, the study pointed to some usability and accessibility challenges to be addressed, including:

  • Devices timing out before users complete their voice commands
  • Unclear and inconsistent voice commands that must be remembered
  • Dependency on paired computing devices
  • Lack of awareness of the voice assistance device’s capabilities

Feldner and Steele’s ‘Reimagining Mobility’ series featured in The Daily

Collaboration and diverse perspectives and approaches are at the heart of CREATE’s mission to make technology accessible and make the world accessible though technology.

One program developed by CREATE faculty looks at mobility solutions and ways to eliminate barriers. Hosted by CREATE associate directors Kat Steele and Heather Feldner, the Reimagining Mobility Conversation Hub brings in speakers from a variety of backgrounds and industries to inspire conversations about the future of mobility.

The UW student newspaper, The Daily, featured the program in Reimagining Mobility: Professors Amplify Disabled Voices in the November 15 2021 issue.

Headshot of Kat Steele, smiling warmly. She is a white woman with long brown hair.

Working at a children’s hospital made me want to grow my knowledge as an engineer. There was just this disconnect of how we thought about technology, how we thought about what was possible, and what was actually available.

Dr. Kat Steele, CREATE Associate Director and Albert S. Kobayashi Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Headshot of Heather Feldner, smiling brightly. She is a white woman with short brown and grey hair, and wears dark rimmed glasses, a gray shirt and black sweater.

How we move around really impacts our social relationships. It impacts our ability to participate in school, in jobs, in social events — it’s really one of our major connections to the world. The end goal of mobility is to engage in our lives and participate meaningfully.

Dr. Heather Feldner, CREATE Associate Director and
Assistant Professor, Rehabilitation Medicine: Physical Therapy

Reimagining Mobility: Inclusive Architecture

Karen Braitmayer, seated in her wheelchair on the observation deck of the Space Needle, with full view of Seattle because obstructive walls were removed in a remodel
Click to view the captioned and transcribed video on YouTube

On October 13, 2021 Karen Braitmayer shared images from her experience of— and critical goals for— inclusive architecture. Noting that the best and brightest designers might come in bodies that are different than employers expect, she called for design schools to welcome students with disabilities and for design firms to hire and support the careers of designers with disabilities.

First steps for designers:

  • Provide options: wider seats, different height soap dispensers, etc.
  • Learn about building codes and regulations.
  • Talk to folks who have already figured out how to accommodate for their own disabilities and hack for accessibility.

Sign up for the Conversations

Karen Braitmayer using a wheelchair in a modern building with stairs and ramps

Architect Karen L. Braitmayer, FAIA, is the founding principal of Studio Pacifica, an accessibility consulting firm based in Seattle, Washington. Her “good fight” has consistently focused on supporting equity and full inclusion for persons with disabilities.

In 2019, she was chosen as the national winner of the AIA Whitney M. Young, Jr. award—a prestigious award given to an architect who “embodies social responsibility and actively addresses a relevant issue”. In the award’s 48-year history, she was the first recipient honored for their work in the area of civil rights for persons with disabilities. Braitmayer was also appointed by President Barack Obama to the United States Access Board, a position she retains today.

Join the Reimagining Mobility conversation

Join us for a series of conversations imagining the future of mobility. Hosted by CREATE Associate Directors Kat Steele and Heather Feldner, we 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. 

Sign up for the Conversations

Upcoming conversations

Stay tuned. 2022 series to be announced.

Past conversations

Flyer summarizing the information on Conversation Hub topics for Fall 2021
Download the Fall 2021 flyer (PDF)

CREATE Community Day & Research Showcase 2021

CREATE Community Day 2021, held on June 8, was a rich program that included an important discussion of the concerns and approaches to just, sustainable accessibility research that puts the needs of community members with disabilities front and center. Following this discussion, CREATE members highlighted what their labs are doing, with time to hear about a variety of individual projects. Here are some highlight videos of a small sample of the presentations:

Visual semantic understanding in blind and low-vision technology users
“I can bonk people!”: Effects of modified ride on cars on communication and socio-emotional development in children with disabilities
Blocks4All, an accessible blocks-based programming language
Decoding Intent With Control Theory: Comparing Muscle Versus Manual Interface Performance

Just one day later, the Future of Access Technology class held their final presentations. This class was designed to engage students in active contribution to the disability community, and included assignments to audio-describe videos for YouDescribe.org; try to address bugs within the NVDA open source screen reader community; and build first-person informed final projects on a wide range of topics, including:

  • Improved Word Alt Text plug-in modifies the default behavior in Microsoft PowerPoint when an image is inserted such that the user is prompted with a dialog box that guides them to create alt text that is high quality and contextually relevant to the image’s intended use.
    video preview | website
  • VSCodeTalk project implements a Visual Studio Code extension of CodeTalk, which  makes Visual Studio more accessible to visually impaired developers.
    video preview | website
  • Input Macros project makes it possible to easily add text shortcuts (e.g., “ty” automatically becomes “thank you”) in both Word and on the Web.
    video preview | website
  • Non-verbal Captioning project provides a SnapChat filter that explores how non-verbal captioning in video meeting applications can support DHH and other captioning users.
    video preview | website
  • Signal Monitoring for Accessibility for mobile and hardware programming makes serial port signal data, such as that generated by an Arduino system, accessible to BLV developers. Data can be copied to the system clipboard and audible cues are fired on significant events in the input data stream.
    video preview | website