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