CREATE Newsfeed

2026 CREATE Accessibility Hackathon

We are excited to announce the 2026 CREATE Accessibility Hackathon at the UW Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering!

Everyone is welcome; Not just for developers

We especially encourage people with lived experience of disability to join us. Does this describe you? Then your perspective is essential to building an accessible future.

Whether you have advanced experience with generative AI and building software, fabrication, or other tools—or if you're brand new to coding or have never even heard of hacking—there's a meaningful role for you:

• Brainstorming ideas
• Writing or vibe-coding
• Leading or joining a project team
• Participating in workshops
• Mentoring others

Can't make the whole event? No problem: join for the parts that work for your schedule. Virtual options available for some sessions.

Current schedule

The schedule is still tentative. Stay tuned for updates!

Friday, July 31

Saturday, August 1

Questions?

Reach out to create-contact@uw.edu.

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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 the "social stories" model developed by Carol Gray. Zolyomi says her team also uses generative AI (GenAI) to "explore how we can create personalized stories, since those resonate most with autistic children."

Zolyomi appeared on a local Seattle news program, King5's New Day, to share news of the soon-to-be-released app.

Lessons learned from developing Mystoria

“Social stories help people, especially autistic kids... to just prepare and talk about feelings and the sensory: the noises, the sounds, the textures in a new environment, and also the social interactions.”

- Annuska Zolyomi, CREATE faculty member and Assistant Professor, Computing & Software Systems, UW Bothell

Zolyomi brought on a computer science and software engineering graduate student, Kris Yu, to help develop the app, which the team is aiming to launch in an iOS app format. Undergraduates Adriel Mercado and Kat Xie are also collaborating on the app.

According to Yu, the app integrates large language models (LLMs) to help generate social stories for families. Mystoria is also collaborative, allowing both parents and therapists to work together on the same social story, as well as accessible, with features such as playback rate control and text-to-speech narration.

“Designing for neurodivergent users forced me to think about clarity, simplicity, and predictability in a way that improves the entire app, not just for users with disabilities. I'll carry this mindset with me into every product that I build.” 

- Kris Yu, software engineering graduate student, UW Bothell

Yu also mentioned Mystoria will function similarly to a social media app, with users being able to view and modify other caregivers’ original social stories. He said the process of implementing Zolyomi’s research into a tangible app has been rewarding.

“It forced me to rethink things I [have] taken for granted,” Yu said. “It made me a better designer and a better engineer in every aspect.” 

He noted the differences between working on Mystoria and other apps he's built: in addition to the technical differences in working with a different platform, Mystoria deals with the personal data of children, which requires Yu to prioritize privacy. 

Looking forward

Mystoria will continue to go through phases of user study. Zolyomi mentioned that they want to add personalization to the app, so autistic individuals can interact with social stories that are modeled after their own environments. Eventually, the goal is that the app can be released in Spanish and be compatible with Android, which is the most common mobile device in Panama.

Yu said he will continue to work on the app once he graduates and is submitting a simplified version for consideration in Apple’s Swift Student Challenge.

“Long term, I want the app to be adopted by real families, schools, and family practices,” Yu said. 

This article is excerpted from TheDaily article, UW Bothell research team develops app to assist individuals with autism and their families, by Mary Andolina.

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Community-based research gets new funding for work in computing, information

May 18, 2026

The UW's Community-Engaged Computing Initiative (CECI) is a joint initiative to support projects that bring researchers in computing and information together with community partners. The initiative seeks to bring sustainable, equitable, and inclusive technology into real-world contexts.

With an emphasis on funding research efforts with historically underfunded community partners, CECI supports work that centers the lived experiences of people, whether represented by formalized nonprofits, informal grassroots community organizations, or government-based institutions.

Co-led by the (Allen School), HCDE, and the iSchool, the initiative was launched in 2025 through a gift from Google.

CREATE research supported by CECI

Accessible AI and health management support for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Lead: CREATE postdoctoral researcher Jazette Johnson. Faculty PI: CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff. 2025-2026.

This research focuses on designing accessible and trustworthy AI-enabled health technologies for adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). As AI becomes increasingly embedded in healthcare systems, people with IDD risk being excluded from tools intended to support health management and independence. Johnson and Mankoff partner with community organizations to examine how adults with IDD understand, interact with, and experience AI in health contexts. Their work aims to identify access barriers and develop inclusive AI interfaces, educational materials, and design guidelines that promote autonomy, meaningful participation in healthcare, and improved health outcomes.

AI-enhanced storytelling in blind and low-vision children

Lead: CREATE Ph.D. student Arnavi Chheda-Kothary, Allen School. Faculty co-PIs: CREATE associate directors Jon E. Froehlich and Jacob O. Wobbrock. 2025-2026.

Children commonly create and tell stories as a part of school curriculums, clubs, and social activities. This study explores whether emerging technologies such as AI or tactile tech can assist blind or low-vision (BLV) children in creating and sharing their own stories while preserving their agency as creative storytellers. By enabling BLV children as authors for multimodal stories (visual, tactile), this work will contribute to thinking about tools for sharing stories in mixed-ability groups.

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New Voices in CREATE - the 2026 edition

April 21, 2026

In April, the CREATE Accessibility Seminar welcomed three new(-ish) CREATE faculty members to share their research interests in accessibility, disability studies, and disability-related fields.

The faculty members

Dr. Cecilia Aragon is the director of the Human-Centered Data Science Lab and a professor emeritus in Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE). She has worked in data science, software development, aviation, sociotechnical systems, and accessible computing-related work. She was a co-PI of AccessAdvance until its federal funding was lost in 2025.

Dr. Wanda Pratt is a professor in the Information School and an adjunct professor at the UW Medical School Division of Biomedical & Health Informatics. Her work focuses on health informatics, with a long-term interest at the intersection of health informatics and accessibility, particularly in how people's health conditions can create accessibility needs.

Dr. Rania Hussein is a teaching professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering, teaching Computing & Networking and Data Science. Her research focuses on embedded systems, digital twinning, remote engineering, medical image analysis, and engineering education. She has led several non-profits to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The conversation was led by Gina Clepper, a Ph.D. student in Human Centered Design and Engineering and student co-lead of the CREATE Accessibility Seminar.

Cecilia Aragon

Dr. Cecilia Aragon is the director of the Human-Centered Data Science Lab and a professor emeritus in Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE). She has worked in data science, software development, aviation, sociotechnical systems, and accessible computing-related work. She was a co-PI of AccessAdvance until its federal funding was lost in 2025.

Dr. Aragon shared that one of her new research interests combines her background in human-centered data science and artificial intelligence with her lived experience as a faculty member with a disability and her commitment to equity. 

“Most studies focus on single tools in isolation and most concentrate on visual or hearing disabilities,” said Aragon. She emphasized that those are important, but we need more studies with people with upper limb motor impairments and the ecosystem of accessibility tools. 

Last year, she and her Ph.D. student, Sourojit Ghosh, presented a case study at the Human-Computer Interaction Consortium (HCIC) conference based on Aragon’s experience with chronic hand pain. Her work has always been keyboard-centric: writing code, sending emails, writing proposals, etc. She has tried various tools and many new tools have been recommended, but none were tested on people who don’t type or use a mouse. Some she could not even install without the use of a keyboard or mouse.

Aragon has had success with generative AI (GAI) tools for building tools and macros. She envisions a human-centered approach where AI serves as an aid, where one could say, “I can't use this app. Design some macros for Dragon Naturally Speaking that enable me to use this map tool without using my fingers.”

Wanda Pratt

Dr. Wanda Pratt says that while it’s common for people's health conditions to create temporary or short-term accessibility needs, these needs have often been neglected by both the health informatics community and, to some extent, by the accessibility community as well. She has observed that accessibility tools are often designed for long-term or permanent accessibility needs, neglecting the short-term issues and needs in particular health settings. 

In a project, called “Patients as Safeguards,” her team looked at ways that hospitalized patients could participate in promoting their own health and safety. Many of the patients, however, had substantial accessibility needs, such as coming out of surgery with temporary cognitive issues, mobility limitations, or inability to use their voices. The patients could not effectively communicate and be part of their own safety team. These issues have not been considered in the hospital ecosystem.

“Like Cecilia, my work focuses on really understanding people's needs from their lived experience and developing tools and technologies only once we have a real deep understanding of those perspectives,” said Pratt. Pratt also shares experience as a programmer with the loss of use of a hand due to a repetitive strain injury.

More recently, Pratt has worked with Dr. Emma McDonell, a CREATE Ph.D. graduate in HCDE and currently a postdoctoral fellow at TU Wien in Vienna, Austria. They sought to understand the perspective of people with chronic health conditions and how those conditions created accessibility needs. They’ve worked on co-design studies and have a paper at the American Medical Informatics Association Conference. Another paper is underway for the ASSETS conference: a description of the kinds of needs that people have expressed and their co-designs for how they envision technology can assist them.

Further work focuses on people's ability to trust the healthcare system when they have been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. Pratt has seen some unique accessibility concerns when people are temporarily unable to make decisions for themselves or are forced to undergo treatments and chemical or physical restraints. Her research looks at how patients can express their own values and needs in such a way that can be used by the healthcare system in general.

Socio-technical issues in healthcare culture

Pratt was asked, based on her own work in the different spaces of accessible computing and health informatics, what these research communities can offer to each other. 

“I think they have a lot to learn from each other. The health informatics community has deep knowledge of how the healthcare system works and what works in a hospital setting. But few in accessible computing have a real knowledge of that setting,” Pratt answered. 

“Also the flip is true,” she added. “Accessible computing knows what kinds of tools and technologies could be useful for people with accessibility needs, while clinicians are pretty oblivious to a lot of those things.”

Pratt said she has had conversations with McDonnell and CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff about how the clinician’s goal is to cure people, not to discover devices like a foot mouse or other accessibility technology that can help when a cure is not possible or immediate. 

“That shows a lack of disability justice perspective and a lack of support for someone who cannot use their hands, can’t hear, or who may not want certain medical interventions,” said Pratt.

“Sometimes the accessibility/disability justice perspective does not understand the importance of addressing accessibility needs to improve a person’s chronic condition or to reduce their pain,” Pratt said. “Not simply to accept things the way they are, but to find a mix of getting better and finding ways to better interact with the world – right now and in the future as things change,” she reiterated.

Rania Hussein 

During the pandemic, Dr. Rania Hussein started the Remote Hub Lab to provide students remote access to hardware to complete their assignments and get the same quality of education from a distance. The lab provided access to the hardware through a camera. Students could send in their code and see the output, such as how the circuit should be working remotely. 

When in-person attendance became possible for most students, the lab shifted to investigating how to promote engagement for non-traditional students who may not be able to come to the lab or are not physically available to read their assignments. 

Opportunities for collaboration and testing

In a new project named Redtail, Hussein is combining digital twinning with remote experimentation. She is now looking for students and other users with disabilities to test. 

A back-burnered project is a prototype for a low-cost tool to teach coding to kids with visual impairments. It’s a redevelopment of Microsoft’s Code Jumper focusing on lower-cost hardware.

Hussein invites collaborators to help figure out how coding education can be made accessible for students with disabilities. Dr. Mankoff noted that there are really interesting industry people coming to Tuesday Tinkering who work in the hardware and physical computing space, including Tom Ball, a key figure in the development and educational rollout of the BBC micro:bit for teaching kids to code.

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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 member), Amy Ko (faculty member), Alexis Hiniker, and Jacob O. Wobbrock (CREATE associate director)

Artists on a Decade of AI Evolution: An Interview Study of Affordances, Culture, and Artistic Practice with Machine Learning

Téo Sanchez, Mariya Dzhimova, Stacy Hsueh (former CREATE postdoctoral researcher), Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Vaynee Sungeelee, and Baptiste Caramiaux

“I Don't Trust it, but I Use it”: Navigating Trust, Privacy, and Identity in Disabled People’s Use of Generative AI

Jazette Johnson (postdoctoral researcher), Aaleyah Lewis (Ph.D. student), Jennifer Mankoff (Director of CREATE), Olivia Banner (CREATE Director of Strategy and Operations)

Interface Support for Evaluating Disability Bias in AI Generated Images

Kelly Avery Mack (Ph.D. graduate), Lucy Jiang (Ph.D. student), Lotus Zhang (Ph.D. student), Leah Findlater (CREATE associate director)

Nonvisual Support for Understanding and Reasoning about Data Structures

Brianna L Wimer, Ritesh Kanchi, Kaija Frierson, Venkatesh Potluri (Ph.D. graduate), Ronald Metoyer, Jennifer Mankoff (Director of CREATE), Miya Natsuhara, and Matt Wang

TaskAudit: Detecting functiona11ity errors in mobile apps via agentic task execution

Mingyuan Zhong (Ph.D. student), Chen, X., Kyi, D.W., Li, C., James Fogarty (CREATE associate director), and Jacob O. Wobbrock (CREATE associate director)

Posters

Access to Interpretation: How Formal Cues Ground Interpretive Alt Text for Paintings

Vera L. Zhong, Lucy Jiang (Ph.D. student), Kathryn E. Ringland

AutismCarebot: Emotion-First, Source-Aware Conversational Support for Autistic Users

Shristi Srivastava, Annuska Zolyomi (CREATE associate director), Dong Si

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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 the cross-cultural conversations.

The symposium centered these important concepts: Community-based research that directly involves neurodivegent individuals and their families in the conversation; perspective of human neurological differences as a natural human condition with strengths and challenges due to living in a world primarily designed for neurotypical people; and inclusive and welcoming cross-cultural conversations that celebrate neurodiversity while addressing human-computer interaction (HCI).

Design concepts explored

Researchers generated 10 design concepts that aligned with the five A's of celebratory technology: awareness, accommodation, acceptance, advocacy, and appreciation.

For example, one design encouraged self-reflection and empathy through an installation of mirrors to see oneself from another person's perspective. Other designs explored sensory and social needs, as seen in an app mockup that would encourage crowdsourced annotations of physical environments, such as parks. Beyond individual and family supports, one design promoted the recognition of strengths and abilities of neurodivergent employees to empower individuals to showcase their unique talents.

Continuing the conversation

The symposium organizers built on the event with an online workshop held during the Connected Learning Summit, an annual online event hosted by the Connected Learning Alliance to raise awareness of research related to neurodiversity. The organizers hosted a CHI special interest group focused on the design of celebratory technology.

Other participants are collaborating with students and faculty at the Chiba Institute of Technology and the recently opened Neurodiversity School in Tokyo and have organized virtual discussion groups together with support from the Connected Learning Alliance.

Learn more

This article is excerpted from the scholarly paper, Exploring HCI Neurodiversity Research in Japan: Lessons Learned in Cross-Cultural Relationship Building and Community-Based Research, Annuska Zolyomi, LouAnne Boyd, Mizuko (Mimi) Ito, Ayumi Oishi. ACM Interactions magazine, January - February 2026.

Designing Celebratory Technology for Neurodiversity with Neurodivergent Scholars, Louanne Boyd, Annuska Zolyomi. Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2024.

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OpenThePaths: Connecting people & places through ethical AI

March 9, 2026

If you drive, you've probably used route-finding apps with reasonable success. But these tools do not take into consideration people with mobility challenges who need information about sidewalks, not roads. Washington State’s first map of pedestrian infrastructure, OS-CONNECT, was a main topic at the recent OpenThePaths Conference. Organized by CREATE associate director Anat Caspi, the conference was attended by policymakers, city planners, disability advocates, and technology professionals.

Caspi is an affiliate assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering and directs the UW Taskar Center for Accessible Technology (TCAT) at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

A vision for single-source data for the pedestrian realm

The goal of OpenThePaths and OS-CONNECT is to have accurate, updated, and usable data so that people with different mobility challenges can find routes that work for them and allow transportation officials to fix what isn't working.

• Where are there sidewalks and are there ramps?
• Where are street crossing points?
• Are there steep hills or construction projects that obstruct access?
• Can transit be accessed without stairs and other obstacles?

Ethical use of AI

In the Taskar Center model, data come from a variety of sources, some that don't normally share data — such as aerial imagery, street cameras, and construction contractors — and is used by AI to create a real-time map. Caspi underscored that humans vet all information and will continue to vet and maintain the data shared.

Caspi acknowledged the many institutional barriers that prevent policymakers from “really subscribing to that shared vision and open shared data that supports non-drivers.”

“That will teach you a lot about how our system works and doesn’t work,” she noted.

Learn more

In a recent podcast, What It Would Take to Map Every Sidewalk in Your State, Caspi spoke about the need for and reach of OS-CONNECT and the conference. She also shared how her late daughter, Aviv, helped inspire her work, the tool named in Aviv’s honor, and the importance of ethical, human-centered, and anti-ableist AI.

More resources:

• Advocates Gather at UW, Pushing for Safer, More Accessible Streets, The Urbanist, March 2026
• OpenThePaths 2026: Connecting People and Places Through Sustainable Access
• Taskar project helps pedestrians find accessible routes all over Washington state, CREATE, April 2025

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Ed Summers joins CREATE's advisory board

March 2, 2026

Welcome Ed Summers to CREATE's advisory board!

The Head of Accessibility at GitHub, Ed Summers also serves on disability-related government and not-for-profit boards. As a blind software engineer and leader of accessibility programs within large technology companies, Summers' personal mission is to enable people with disabilities to realize their full potential in the classroom and the 21st century knowledge economy.

"Accessibility is a team sport. It requires contributions from industry, academia, government, and advocacy organizations, just to name a few. Each sector has a role to play. I work in industry and I love to collaborate with leaders from other sectors. CREATE has been a wonderful collaborator and I am very well-aligned with their mission."

- Ed Summers, new CREATE advisory board member

Summers has been advising research on the a11yhood.org project and has appeared on stage with CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference and GitHub Universe.

Gratitude to Ebele Okoli

Summers joins us as Ebele Okoli moves on. We thank Okoli for several years of service as an interim, then official, advisory board member.

"We've been very lucky to have Ebele's expertise in disability justice, intersectionality, and mental health. She has brought important perspectives to the CREATE board and I am so grateful for her service and commitment to CREATE over the years."

- Jennifer Mankoff, CREATE Director

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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 design.

The lasting impact award recognizes research papers “that [have] had a significant impact on computing and information technology that addresses the needs of persons with disabilities.” 

The authors are:

• Shaun K. Kane, CREATE Ph.D. graduate and Advisory Board member
• Chandrika Jayant, former Ph.D. student of Richard Ladner
• Jacob O. Wobbrock, CREATE associate director and former CREATE co-director
• Richard Ladner, CREATE's inaugural Director for Education, Emeritus and a continuing CREATE faculty member

Read more about the award:

• The 2025 SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award, AccessComputing
• Professor, Ph.D. alum honored for smartphone accessibility research, UW iSchool

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Richard Ladner: SIGCSE Outstanding Contribution to CS Education Award

March 5, 2026

Richard Ladner, CREATE's Founding Director for Education Emeritus and a continuing CREATE faculty member, received the 2026 Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education Award at the ACM SIGCSE Conference.

The award cited Ladner’s contributions to accessible computer science education at the K-12, college, and graduate levels and was given “in recognition of long-lasting efforts to develop new technologies and activities to engage people, particularly children, in creative learning experiences based on computational literacy for discovery and expression.”

Richard Ladner, CREATE founding Director for Education Emeritus and Professor Emeritus, Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

Ladner’s work has had a profound impact on the accessibility of CS education, the inclusion of accessibility in the computing curriculum, and the inclusion of disability in broadening participation activities. 

The ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education honors researchers who have made a long-lasting impact and significant contribution to computing education.

Through mentoring and advocacy, Ladner has directly helped hundreds of students with disabilities to gain exposure to computing as a potential career path. A handful of examples:

• AccessComputing's principal investigator and founder. AccessComputing has supported over 1,500 high school, undergraduate, and graduate students in building skills and connections with mentors and professional opportunities in computing-related fields.
• Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing, co-founder. The summer academy helped students jump start their academic careers by spending the summer taking computing courses at the UW’s Seattle campus. Three of those students became computing faculty themselves.
• AccessCSforAll's Founding PI and continuing advisor. AccessCSforAll provides accessible computer science curriculum and other resources available to K–12 students with disabilities. Their paper describing the work received the SIGCSE 2019 Best Paper Award.
• “Teaching Accessibility” co-editor with Alannah Oleson and CREATE faculty member Amy Ko. The online book provides computing instructors with tools and resources to help them incorporate accessibility into their teaching.
• More papers: The importance of teaching and learning about accessibility, and Outlining strategies for integrating accessibility into various computer science courses.  

This article was excerpted from the Allen School article about Ladner's career at UW as a professor in computer science & engineering.

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Jon E. Froehlich Honored with SIGCHI Societal Impact Award

March 3, 2026

CREATE associate director Jon E. Froehlich received a Societal Impact Award at the 2026 SIGCHI Conference for addressing accessibility challenges through HCI and AI.

Froehlich, a professor of computer science and engineering in the Allen School, directs the UW Makeability Lab, utilizing human-computer interaction (HCI) and machine learning to tackle high-impact socially relevant problems. His work has led to improved city planning and sidewalk infrastructure across the globe, and he has developed technologies that have enabled blind and low-vision users to prepare meals, participate in sports and even engage with children’s artwork. 

His work on accessible maps (CHI 2019 Best Paper award, UIST 2025) included the first-ever screen reader for Google Street View and real-time sound recognition for deaf and hard-of-hearing users (CHI 2020, CHI 2022, CACM 2022); it has directly impacted product teams at Google and Microsoft. This combination of civic impact, policy influence, and industry translation is rare in HCI; that Froehlich has sustained it across a decade of work is exceptional. 

As fellow CREATE associate director Jacob O. Wobbrock noted, "His research in urban accessibility has achieved what few HCI researchers ever accomplish: direct, measurable change on a global scale. Specifically, Froehlich's work has affected how cities invest in pedestrian infrastructure, how communities and governments in 40+ cities plan for accessibility, and how federal agencies define walkability and accessibility data standards. Froehlich's societal impact has been measurable and huge!" 

Jon E. Froehlich, CREATE Associate Director

• Professor, Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
• Director, Makeability Lab
• Associate Director of Tech Transfer and Outreach of PacTrans
• Co-founder of Project Sidewalk
• Core Faculty, Urban Design and Planning Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program

“This recognition belongs to my incredible students and collaborators in the Makeability Lab who work tirelessly to design more accessible, equitable futures and pursue research in accessibility, education, and environmental sustainability.”

- Jon E. Froehlich, in Allen School news

About the award

SIGCHI, the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, recognizes mid-career to senior researchers whose HCI work demonstrates social benefit.

“This recognition belongs to my incredible students and collaborators in the Makeability Lab who work tirelessly to design more accessible, equitable futures and pursue research in accessibility, education, and environmental sustainability.”

- Jon E. Froehlich, in Allen School news

Project Sidewalk - real and lasting impact

One project developed in Froehlich's Makeability Lab, Project Sidewalk, has been used by U.S. cities to help fund initiatives to improve the safety and accessibility of their pedestrian infrastructure. In Newberg, Oregon, Project Sidewalk collected more than 17,000 labels and showed that sidewalks were inaccessible especially around voting centers and bus stops, prompting the city council to authorize $50,000 for immediate sidewalk repairs and establish a grant program to help homeowners fix their own sidewalks. After Mendota, Illinois, experienced devastating fires in 2022, community partners used Project Sidewalk data to secure a $3.6 million Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program grant to rebuild their sidewalks. 

Past CREATE recipients

Froehlich joins CREATE leaders who have received the SIGCHI Societal Impact Award (formerly "Social Impact Award"):

• Jennifer Mankoff, CREATE Director, in 2022
• Juan Gilbert, former CREATE Advisory Board member, in 2021
• Jacob O. Wobbrock, CREATE associate director, in 2017
• Jonathan Lazar, CREATE Advisory Board member, in 2016
• Richard Ladner, CREATE's Director of Education Emeritus, in 2014

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Adaptive Solutions Mini-Hackathon: 2026 Recap

February 26, 2026

In January, CREATE and HuskyADAPT teamed up with the King County Library System (KCLS) to host a mini-hackathon to brainstorm and prototype solutions to accessibility problems.

After an introduction to five real-world requests submitted by the disability community, participants self-selected their projects and got to work building their prototypes. These diverse teams of makers, researchers, disability professionals, and volunteers were assisted by community co-designers and design leads.

They worked in KCLS's Bellevue Makerspace using moldable thermoplastic, cardboard, glue, tape, fabric, sewing machines, etc.

Participant feedback

Projects at the 2026 event

Accessible fanny pack

Goal: Design an easily organized fanny pack for a student with developmental disabilities who struggles with zippers, jumbled contents, and grasping specific items. Contexts include using the pack one-handed while communicating, purchasing, riding the bus, and other daily activities.

Weighted backpack

Goal: Adapt a weighted backpack for autistic teens and adults to support sensory processing differences. Challenges included design for durability, affordability, and visual aesthetics, with components that are easily accessible. Should grow with the the individual.

Easy-to-grasp hair clip

Goal: Create a universal design device to add usability to butterfly/claw-style hairclip handles to make grasping and using easier. A significant challenge was to design an adaptation that would work with a wide variety of hairclip designs. Members' lived experience with arthritis informed the team's work.

Q Charms accessories

Q charms are jewelry-based tokens for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) icons. Goal: Using 3D-printed tokens that fit on a silicon wristband or bracelet, design an easily adjustable bracelet extender and also a lanyard that can have Q charms attached and detached. Challenges include avoiding bulk and keeping charms from spinning to to the inside.

Customized Q Charms

Goal: Create an accessible, open source software pipeline for creating digital custom Q charm designs in CAD and design a Q charm that users can customize with any image of their choice on the spot.

Acknowledgements

We thank KCLS for the use of their Bellevue makerspace and HuskyADAPT students for their skillful and enthusiastic organization of the event.

Hackathon organizers

Annika Pfister

Hackathon co-host and HuskyADAPT Outreach Chair; 3rd-year Ph.D. student in Electrical & Computer Engineering

Tanvi Bachu

Hackathon co-host and HuskyADAPT Outreach Chair; 3rd-year undergraduate student in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Megan Willan

Adult & Maker Services Librarian at King County Library System

Project design and feedback panelists

• Brennan Johnston, Assistive Technology Support Technician for Washington Assistive Technology Act Program (WATAP)​
• Dr. Gaurav Chaudhari, software engineer at Google ​
• Kate Glazko – UW CREATE​ Ph.D. student and student representative; 3rd-year Ph.D. student and NSF grad student fellow at the Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering
• Megan Willan, Adult & Maker Services Librarian at King County Library System​
• Sarah Lemke, MOT, OTR/L, a licensed and board-certified occupational therapist at the University of Washington Autism Center

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

January 29, 2026

Internationally recognized research to address a real-world need got its start at a CREATE hackfest.

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 of a two year-old child with severe motor delays due to cerebral palsy. Smoot, who participated in the project development, described the need for a tool that exceeds what can be supported by current medical equipment and assistive technology.

Lige Yang, then a master's degree student in Human Centered Design and Engineering, led design. Yang is now a product designer specializing in AI-powered UX, accessible health technology, and human-centered systems.

Richard Li is a Ph.D. student at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, contributed to the sensing, AI model explorations, and the technical concept. His work focuses on applying sensing and machine learning to novel interactions, accessibility, and health.

Max Smoot, a systems engineer in the Puget Sound area, was the primary developer responsible for system implementation, led the testing and validation effort, and collaborated on key aspects of the system architecture.

The team won second place at the hackfest by demonstrating technical feasibility, including using computer vision models to detect poor posture, formulate intervention recommendations, and send push alerts to caregivers.

... To award-winning design

After the hackathon, Yang joined the Neotic company, where she led project direction on Veya, focusing on the smarthome wellness feature. She conducted usability tests and optimized the user experience. She engaged with industry experts at AI and health experience design events and was able to expanded the product's scope.

Two design events led to highly competitive professional milestones and awards for Veya and Yang: the MUSE Design Award and the International Design Awards Bronze Award. Recently, Yang presented the design at the International Design Awards in Thailand.

International Design Awards Bronze Prize

Company: Neotic

Lead Designers: Lige Yang

Project Location: Seattle

Prize: Bronze in Family & Children / Children's Health and Wellness Products

Entry Description: Unlike wearable monitors that are uncomfortable, unsuitable for special chairs, and built for healthy bodies, Veya is designed for children with cerebral palsy. Its calm, accessible interface reduces stress in urgent moments, reassuring families while easing the burden of constant caregiving.

Currently, Yang is dedicated to establishing accessibility-first design principles, driving AI design advancements in the accessibility field.

Inspiration from the hackathon and advisors

Yang shared her thanks to the hackfest organizers (Kate Glazko, Jerry Cao, Venkatesh Potluri, Tony Fast, and Kathleen Voss) and community for the platform that brought attention to real-world accessibility needs and sparked her interest in designing and developing a solution. 

“The hackathon revealed the vast, unspoken accessibility needs in the real world, sparked my passion as a designer to use technology to shine a light on these unheard communities,” says Yang.

- Lige Yang, MS 2024, Human Centered Design and Engineering

She also credits CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff for Mankoff's advice that she talk with different specialists. Yang followed the advice to meet with CREATE Advisory Board member Sean Kane and Brennen Johnston, Assistive Technology Support Technician at WATAP, a CREATE community partner. Both provided excellent advice centered on making sure the AI doesn't mislead users, considering that caregivers, who are already facing stress, need a very shallow learning curve. And, of course, the system must be designed with accessibility in mind from the start.

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Katharina Reinecke explores how “digital culture shock” manifests in the world

November 17, 2025

In her new book, CREATE faculty member and professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, Katharina Reinecke explores how “digital culture shock” manifests in the world, in ways innocuous and sometimes harmful.

The overwhelm people can feel when suddenly immersed in a new culture — a flurry of unfamiliar values, aesthetics, and language — is known as culture shock. In her new book, “Digital Culture Shock: Who Creates Technology and Why This Matters,” Reinecke argues that technology can similarly disorient, discomfit, and alienate people. Reinecke uses the phrase to describe “the experience and influence of actively or passively using technology that is not in line with one’s cultural practices or norms.” 

The book explores how the self-driving cars trained on U.S. streets would likely struggle to translate to Cairo, with its drastically different road norms. It looks at how Yahoo! Japan, with its complex search interface, can overwhelm Americans used to Google’s minimalist design. Reinecke also digs into how so much technology emanating from specific regions, such as the Bay Area, can lead to forms of cultural imperialism.

In an interview with UW News, Reinecke shared that the idea for the book came from an embarrassing moment around 20 years ago. She was working in Rwanda to develop an e-learning application for agricultural advisors. When she presented her software to some of the advisors, they politely told her that they didn’t like the way it looked and didn’t find it intuitive to use.  

She realized that her cultural background had influenced all the little design decisions made while developing the software: whether the interface should be colorful or simply gray and white, which she thought most people would prefer; whether users should be guided through the application or mostly explore on their own. The answer to any of these questions depends on a user’s upbringing, education, norms, and values.

“Once I realized that technology is never culturally neutral, I set out to earn a doctorate on this topic and the rest is history... Most people have no idea that their culture affects how they use technology and how they develop it. It’s just not something we usually think about or get taught.”

Katharina Reinecke, professor in computer science & engineering, and Director of the Wildlab and the Center for Globally Beneficial AI

"Over the years, I kept collecting similar technology blunders. It turns out, like me, most people have no idea that their culture affects how they use technology and how they develop it. It’s just not something we usually think about or get taught," said Reinecke. 

AI as a mirror of its developers

When ChatGPT and other generative AI tools came out, they were trained on mostly English data sources on the web, so early language models told us things like, “I am proud to be an American.” Asked for images of houses of worship, text-to-image models generated pictures of churches, as if churches were the only reasonable response.

The most consequential misassumptions about tech and culture

Reinecke finishes the book with a list of 10 misassumptions; in the UW News interview, she named her number one.

"To me, it is that people tend to think that one size fits all. They design technology and expect it to work for everyone, which is obviously not true," said Reinecke.

For example, the Western obsession with productivity and efficiency often comes at the expense of interpersonal interactions. So many technology products are hyperfocused on making our days more efficient. There’s an app for any of our “problems,” and all of them try to somehow get us to function better, faster and more productively. But this laser-focus on streamlining misses the point that in many cultures, productivity works differently. In many East Asian cultures, for example, it takes time to build relationships before people will trust another person’s information — or that given by AI. So we need to get rid of the misassumption that technology design can be universal.

"My job would certainly be so much easier if people would stop believing this," quipped Reinecke.

This article was excerpted from the UW News article by Stefan Milne.

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Hala Annabi to lead new UW Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment

October 21, 2025

CREATE congratulates faculty member Dr. Hala Annabi on her new role as the Founding Director of the new UW Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment.

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 that make a case for hiring neurodivergent people and offer concrete instructions for supporting their growth and career development.

Removable barriers to employment for neurodivergent adults

Studies suggest that up to 20% of the U.S. population is neurodivergent. Neurodivergent adults — such as those on the autism spectrum, or with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, or other cognitive differences — experience significant barriers to inclusion in education and employment due to disabilities that often aren’t obvious.

"The lower education and employment outcomes are largely attributed to education and workplace environments that were designed to reinforce normative expectations.”

Hala Annabi, CREATE faculty and founding director, Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment

Research shows that only 25% of autistic adults remain consistently employed over time, and just 67% of adults with ADHD are employed, compared to 87% employment among adults without ADHD. Accordingly, efforts to improve the neuroinclusivity of academic institutions and workplaces have significant potential for impact on individuals, families and the U.S. economy.

“The lower education and employment outcomes are largely attributed to education and workplace environments that were designed to reinforce normative expectations,” said Annabi. “When learning and work environments are designed for neurodiversity — and managers and teachers are trained to be neuroinclusive — neurodivergent individuals achieve far better outcomes,” she noted.

$15M launch grant from the Canopy Neurodiversity Foundation

The Canopy Neurodiversity Foundation awarded a $15 million grant to the UW iSchool to support the launch of the institute.

“The Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment is set up to make a significant difference — not just at the University of Washington, but for communities all over our state,” said Laurie Ackles, executive director of the Canopy Neurodiversity Foundation. “This institute will build on Canopy’s vision for a truly neuroinclusive workforce, dramatically expanding what’s possible in our state.”

Housed in the iSchool, the Institute will integrate faculty, research and support from the Michael G. Foster School of Business and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, with additional collaboration from UW Medicine and the School of Social Work.

“The new institute will build upon the outstanding neurodiversity work of Dr. Annabi,” said Anind K. Dey, Dean of the UW Information School. “Adding the deep expertise of our cross-campus collaborators, along with Canopy and other community partners, we will create truly multidisciplinary, innovative and impactful solutions that will transform Washington’s education and employment spaces — including here at the UW.”

“At present, research addressing lifespan issues such as employment is happening in silos across various disciplines, limiting our ability to develop comprehensive solutions,” said Annabi. “By convening a broad coalition of partners across the neurodiversity, employment and academic communities, we can move beyond isolated efforts toward innovative, systems-level change — driven by those with lived experience and deep expertise.”

Annabi's vision for the Institute and the UW

The Institute’s work will focus on five pillars: translational research on neurodiversity and employment, applied professional education and training, community empowerment across Washington state, advocacy efforts to create and strengthen neuroinclusive policies and practices statewide, and direct engagement with UW leadership to make the university a premier destination for neurodivergent faculty, staff, clinicians and students.

Annabi is particularly enthusiastic about the UW’s commitment to ‘walk the talk’ by committing, through the Institute, to neuroinclusive employment practices.

“The UW recognizes that employment is an important component of a person’s quality of life and the equitable distribution of societal resources and power,” said UW Provost Tricia Serio.  “As one of the state’s largest employers, we have a vital role to play in modeling ways to increase support for neurodivergent people and break down the persistence of barriers in post-secondary education and the workplace that they face. We are thrilled to channel this work through the Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment.”

The UW Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment will launch activities and programming in 2026.

This article was adapted from the UW News article by Dana Robinson Slote.

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2025 Race, Disability and Technology Funded Research

September 22, 2025

In our ongoing efforts to support new avenues in research on race, disability, and technology, CREATE funded three new Race, Disability, and Technology (RDT) grants in 2025.

Tier I project:
Digital Code-Switching and Masking in GAI Use for Multilingual and Multicultural People with Disabilities

CREATE Ph.D. student Aaleyah Lewis, with advisor James Fogarty, received a Tier I grant to explore how multilingual and multicultural people with disabilities engage in code-switching, in masking, and in the intersection of these practices in their daily digital lives.

Tier I project:
Health equity and telemedicine in a rural mining community in Brazil

Jonathan Warren, a UW professor of International Studies, and Dr. Rute Maia, researcher of Social Sciences, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and a 2023–24 UW visiting scholar, were also awarded a Tier I RDT grant for a project about health equity and telemedicine in a rural mining community in Brazil.

Tier II project:
Reimagining accessibility technology in special education: A community-based approach to supporting students and families of color

CREATE awarded its first Tier II RDT grant to a team led by Carmen Gonzalez. Working with Seattle Public Schools, Dr. Gonzalez’s team will capture the lived experiences of 20 families who use accessibility technology in special education settings.

The team will talk to families from urban and rural areas, giving families control to guide the conversations and review what they share before it’s added to the digital storytelling archive. The collected stories will help create a professional development program for educators that challenges racism and ableism and better prepares them to support students who use accessibility tools.

Gonzalez is an associate professor in the UW Department of Communication and a co-director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity and the CCDE’s Health Equity Action Lab.

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

September 15, 2025

CREATE postdoctoral researcher Bethany Sloane has been working to expand power mobility options for young children with cerebral palsy and other mobility delays. The NIH K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award will allow her to pursue her research for the next four years.

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 training that will enable therapists and caregivers to use Permobil® Explorer Mini mobility devices for in-home therapy. 

The grant will also allow Sloane to support therapists and collect data, notably on how consistently the devices are used and any issues that arise. Sloane hopes to broaden the program to include more regions within Washington and Oregon.

Sloane is thankful for support from CREATE and mentorship from CREATE associate director Heather Feldner, who, she said, “helped me understand the grant submission process in general and the NIH grant process in particular.” 

The NIH K23 award is a testament of Bethany’s hard work and growth during her postdoc, and I know this work will set her up for continued research success in the future.” 

Heather Feldner, Sloane's co-advisor and a CREATE associate director

“It’s been an incredible and rewarding experience to mentor Bethany,” Feldner noted. “It’s rare to be able to work with someone who already has outstanding clinical expertise and a genuine eagerness to learn across disciplines, coupled with a remarkable drive to expand access to technologies that empower children through self-initiated mobility. The NIH K23 award is a testament of Bethany’s hard work and growth during her postdoc, and I know this work will set her up for continued research success in the future.” 

An interdisciplinary CREATE collaborator

Sloane has been a practicing physical therapist since 2009. Her doctorate in physical therapy led to practice in pediatrics, and then to a pediatric physical therapy residency at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in 2014. While collaborating with Feldner on a childhood mobility study, Sloane heard about CREATE’s postdoctoral research program, applied, and was awarded a 2024–25 fellowship, with Feldner and Amy Pace, from UW’s Speech and Hearing Sciences program, as co-advisors. 

Through work with Go Baby Go Oregon, a non-profit organization that modifies ride-on toy cars, adapts toys, and adds sensory materials to books for children with disabilities – and which she now directs – Sloane was introduced to the unique collaboration between therapists and engineers.

“Never would I have imagined that, as a physical therapist, I’d be building accelerometer trackers and attaching them to children’s toys,”

Bethany Sloane, CREATE postdoctoral researcher

Sloane also collaborates with CREATE associate director Katherine M. Steele and CREATE faculty Kim Ingraham, both UW engineering faculty. She praises – and exemplifies – CREATE’s collaborative environment that has helped translate her vision to real-world discovery.

For one current project, engineering students are helping equip 20 mobility devices with low-cost trackers that will gather data about when and how the mobility devices are used in children’s homes. This work is supported by an Allen School Postdoc Research Award she received earlier this year.

“Never would I have imagined that, as a physical therapist, I’d be building accelerometer trackers and attaching them to children’s toys,” said Sloane. 

Book adaptation workshop for HuskyADAPT

While a CREATE postdoc, Sloane hosted a HuskyADAPT workshop about book adaptation. For blind and low-vision children encountering printed books, rhinestones and pipe cleaners enhance high-contrast images and provide tactile cues to help children connect related images and words. Additional rhinestones or pompoms on page corners add space between pages, which helps B/LV children turn the pages.

After she demonstrated how to add sensory materials to books, HuskyADAPT members adapted books themselves.

Photo top: Sloane poses with an adapted children’s book during a HuskyADAPT workshop she led. Photo bottom: Adapted books displayed at a HuskyADAPT event.

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Sloane's NIH K23 funded project is titled “Partnering with Part C Early Intervention to Implement a Powered Mobility Training Program for Young Children with Cerebral Palsy, Gross Motor Function Classification System Level IV–V.”

• Bethany Sloane’s OHSU faculty page
• The NIH K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award to support Ph.D.s working toward an independent clinical research program.
• The Allen School Postdoc Research Award to provide postdocs the opportunity to pursue independent research projects carried out by undergraduates.
• Technical paper: Short-Term Powered Mobility Intervention Is Associated With Improvements in Development and Participation for Young Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Randomized Clinical Trial

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Blind and Low Vision Teens Join CREATE through YES2 Summer Internships

September 3, 2025

This summer, CREATE hosted three high school/undergraduate interns through a program that focuses on career preparation for young Washingtonians who are blind or visually disabled.

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.

The YES2 interns helped with research projects led by CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff, Human Centered Design & Engineering professor Julie Kientz, and CREATE and UW DUB postdoctoral researchers.

Mankoff was impressed with the interns’ technical training. “They are incredible — technically adept — and worked on amazing research projects. One project is to make CAD (computer-aided design) accessible to people who are Deaf-Blind; one is focused on a blocks-based physical design platform; and one is focused on accessible diagrams.”

Hear from three people – two interns and a mentor – who participated in the program at CREATE:

Susanna Haley, YES2 intern

Susanna Haley worked on a project to make flowcharts more accessible for individuals with low vision or blindness. Her goal was to extract and convert flowchart information — nodes such as rectangles for processes and diamonds for decisions and the arrows between nodes — into a list format that is more accessible. Susanna reviewed 32 PDF documents and extracted 342 images that looked like flowcharts.

“I began by having AI generate random flowcharts. Then, I developed a program where users could input the number of nodes and edges, as well as the topic of the flowchart,” she explained. “Next, I applied inclusion and exclusion criteria to narrow down the number of flowcharts that met the definition for the project,” she added.

In the process, Susanna gained several new skills, such as working with OpenAI’s APIs and learning more about the Python programming language. She also learned and used Mermaid to create flowcharts, Flask to build web apps, basic generative AI prompt engineering, and how to transfer output into an HTML file. She said she gained a deeper understanding of Monarch, a multi-line braille display device that creates tactile graphics integrated with braille. 

Susanna said she enjoyed building a connection to the computer science community and seeing the technology research happening at CREATE and other labs. 

“I saw a little better what research at an institution would look like if I decided to pursue that path.” In addition to her many successes in the 5-week internship, she experienced the disappointment of needing to become more exact about which images were actually flowcharts and having to go back and redo some work. “I learned that in research, accuracy matters most,” she noted. 

Mohammed Al-jawadi, YES2 intern

Intern Mohammed Al-jawadi worked on an accessible CAD project with CREATE postdoctoral research scientist Carlos Tejada. The project involved creating a library of about sixty 3D models from the Thingiverse website. Al-jawadi collected models such as animals and household items, and then collaborated on building a large language model (LLM) to describe the models. 

In the process, Al-jawadi also used the Monarch braille and tactile graphics tablet and found it very useful for a hands-on approach to learning.

“I would say the most valuable thing that I have learned at this internship is how to build and fine-tune an LLM because I am going to college in the fall studying computer science. Learning about LLMs gives me an understanding on how AI models work.”

Kaija Frierson, mentor and DUB undergraduate researcher

Kaija Frierson mentored the YES2 interns, assisting with tasks like building diagrams, running tests, learning the tools used in the lab, and showing them around the space. Frierson, a computer science major at the University of Arkansas, was a DUB undergraduate research intern this summer, advised by Mankoff. While at the UW, she worked on the Accessible Diagram Project, which focuses on finding ways to make computer science diagrams more accessible for experienced educators and learners.

Frierson remarked on the positivity of the interns: “They asked thoughtful questions, picked things up quickly, and were not only hardworking, but also really nice to be around.”

“I really appreciated how the YES2 program gives blind and visually disabled young people the chance to build skills, try things out, and think about their future careers. Being part of it made me realize how valuable programs like this are for preparing students and creating a more inclusive environment,” said Frierson.

DSB partnership with CREATE

The Department of Services for the Blind is a CREATE community partner.

DSB provides career support, independent living services, and youth and family services for Washingtonians who are experiencing vision loss or are Blind, Deaf-Blind, or Low Vision. They also support employers looking to create an inclusive workplace and are always expanding the list of employers who offer summer internships for YES2 students. Contact Janet George for details.

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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. alumni. Congratulations to all!

• Best Demo: Venkatesh Potluri and Dhruv Jain - Venkatesh Potluri (Ph.D. CSE '24) and Dhruv Jain (Ph.D. CSE '22), are co-authors of Demo of RAVEN: Realtime Accessibility in Virtual ENvironments for Blind and Low-Vision People. Full author list: Xinyun Cao, Kexin Phyllis Ju, Chenglin Li, Venkatesh Potluri, Dhruv Jain. Potluri was advised by CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff; Jain was advised by CREATE associate director Jon E. Froehlich.

• Best Paper: Megan Hofmann - Megan Hofmann (Ph.D. CSE '22) is a co-author on the paper, “As Someone Who is Disabled, I am so thankful for Sex Work”: Alternative Approaches to Access Among Disabled Sex-Workers." Full list of authors: Jay Rodolitz, Vaughn Hamilton, Madiha Tabassum, Ada Lerner, Megan Hofmann. Hofmann was advised by CREATE director Jennifer Mankoff.

Papers authored by CREATE students, faculty, alumni

A11yShape: “AI-Assisted 3-D Modeling for Blind and Low-Vision Programmers”

Zhuohao (Jerry) Zhang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Haichang Li, Chun Meng Yu, Faraz Faruqi, Junan Xie, Gene S-H Kim, Mingming Fan, Angus G. Forbes, Jacob O. Wobbrock (CREATE associate director), Anhong Guo, Liang He.

“Before, I Asked My Mom, Now I Ask ChatGPT”: Visual Privacy Management with Generative AI for Blind and Low-Vision People

Tanusree Sharma, Yu-Yun Tseng, Lotus Zhang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Ayae Ide, Kelly Avery Mack (former CREATE postdoc, Ph.D. graduate), Leah Findlater (CREATE associate director), Danna Gurari, Yang Wang.

Beyond Beautiful: Embroidering Legible and Expressive Tactile Graphics

Margaret Ellen Seehorn, Claris Winston (CREATE graduate student), Bo Liu, Gene S-H Kim, Emily White, Nupur Gorkar (HuskyADAPT Communications Chair), Kate S. Glazko (CREATE Ph.D. student), Aashaka Desai (CREATE Ph.D. student), Jerry Cao (CREATE Ph.D. student), Megan Hofmann (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director).

CapTune: Adapting Non-Speech Captions With Anchored Generative Models

Jeremy Zhengqi Huang, Caluã de Lacerda Pataca, Liang-Yuan Wu, Dhruv Jain (CREATE Ph.D. graduate).

CARTGPT: Real-Time Correction of CART Captions Using Large Language Models

Liang-Yuan Wu, Andrea Kleiver, Dhruv Jain (CREATE Ph.D. graduate).

Exploring Disability Culture Through Accounts of Disabled Innovators of Accessibility Technology

Aashaka Desai (CREATE Ph.D. student), Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director), Richard E. Ladner (CREATE Director for Education Emeritus)

From Screen Reading to Scene Reading in SceneVR

Melanie Jo Kneitmix (CREATE Ph.D. student), Jacob O. Wobbrock (CREATE associate director)

Minor Resistance: The Everyday Politics and Power Dynamics of Assistive Technology Adoption

Stacy Hsueh (CREATE postdoc), Danielle Van Dusen (CREATE Community Partner), Anat Caspi (CREATE associate director), Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director).

Modeling Accessibility: Characterizing What We Mean by “Accessible”

Kelly Avery Mack (former CREATE postdoc, Ph.D. graduate), Jesse J. Martinez (CREATE Ph.D. student), Aaleyah Lewis (CREATE Ph.D. student), Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director), James Fogarty (CREATE associate director), Leah Findlater (CREATE associate director), Heather D. Evans, Cynthia L Bennett, Emma J. McDonnell (CREATE postdoc and Ph.D. graduate).

Rethinking Productivity with GenAI: A Neurodivergent Students’ Perspective

Hira Jamshed, Mustafa Naseem, Venkatesh Potluri (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Robin N. Brewer

SoundNarratives: Rich Auditory Scene Descriptions to Support Deaf and Hard of Hearing People

Liang-Yuan Wu, Dhruv Jain (CREATE Ph.D. graduate)

Temp access: Reflecting on multimodal GAI as an accessibility technology for temporary disability

An experience report from CREATE Ph.D. student Kate S. Glazko (CREATE Ph.D. student)

VizXpress: Towards Expressive Visual Content by Blind Creators Through AI Support

Lotus Zhang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Zhuohao (Jerry) Zhang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Gina Clepper (CREATE Ph.D. student), Franklin Mingzhe Li, Patrick Carrington, Jacob O. Wobbrock (CREATE associate director), Leah Findlater (CREATE associate director).

Where Can I Park? Understanding Human Perspectives and Scalably Detecting Disability Parking from Aerial Imagery

Jared Hwang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Chu Li (CREATE Ph.D. student), Hanbyul Kang, Maryam Hosseini, Jon E. Froehlich (CREATE associate director).

Posters by CREATE students, faculty, alumni

The Accessibility, Security, and Privacy Nexus: Trends and Opportunities

Kelly Avery Mack (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Yu-Jie Chen, Lotus Zhang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Danna Gurari, Tanusree Sharma, Yang Wang, Leah Findlater, CREATE associate director)

Accessibility Heuristics for Vibe Coding Interfaces

Shalini Madan, Sreelakshmi Surabiyil Bindu, Venkatesh Potluri (CREATE Ph.D. graduate)

DIY in Action: Understanding Do-It-Yourself Practices from Tangible Symbol Cards

Alexander S.W. Parent, L. Beth Brady, Sarah Ivy, Jennifer Hercman, Amy Hurst (CREATE Advisory Board member)

Re-framing Accessibility from Constraint to Creative Catalyst

Sarah Andrew, Anisa Callis, Anne Spencer Ross (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Garreth W. Tigwell

Towards a Group Recommender System for Team Formation Foregrounding Students with Social Anxiety

Annuska Zolyomi (CREATE faculty member), Danny Nguyen

Demos by CREATE students, faculty, alumni

Demo of CapTune: Adapting Non-Speech Captions with Anchored Generative Models

Jeremy Zhengqi Huang, Caluã de Lacerda Pataca, Liang-Yuan Wu, Dhruv Jain (CREATE Ph.D. graduate)

EvolveCaptions: Real-Time Collaborative ASR Adaptation for DHH Speakers

Liang-Yuan Wu, Dhruv Jain (CREATE Ph.D. graduate)

GeoQA3 : Towards An Accessible AI-based Question-Answering System for Geoanalytics

Chu Li (CREATE Ph.D. student), Rock Yuren Pang (CREATE Ph.D. student), Arnavi Chheda-Kothary (CREATE Ph.D. student), Ather Sharif (CREATE Ph.D. graduate), Henok Assalif, Jeffrey Heer, Jon E. Froehlich (CREATE associate director)

Making Street View Accessible Using Context-Aware, Multimodal AI: A Demo of StreetViewAI

Jon E. Froehlich, Alexander J. Fiannaca, Nimer M Jaber, Victor Tsaran, Shaun K. Ka

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Next Steps: People of CREATE Updates

June 11, 2025

Congratulations to students and postdocs on a productive academic year! Join us in celebrating these career steps.

Graduation

Congratulations to CREATE member Anant Mittal, a newly minted Ph.D., for completing his program and successfully defending his thesis! During his program, Mittal, advised by James Fogarty, worked on the design and development of Jod, a videoconferencing platform to facilitate communication in mixed hearing groups. Mittal’s final thesis focused on designing, implementing, and examining systems for communication, collaboration, and coordination in complex settings, such as interactions among people with and without disabilities and patients with chronic conditions collaborating with providers for care.

Postdocs on the move

Congratulations to these postdoctoral researchers as they embark on the next steps in their careers!

Dr. Tamanna Motahar has been appointed to the position of Patrick Clark Endowed Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Informatics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She expresses deep gratitude to her fellow CREATE postdocs and her mentors, Maya Cakmak, Heather Feldner, and Jennifer Mankoff, for their guidance, mentorship, and support during her postdoctoral fellowship and during the job search.

Dr. Kelly Avery Mack, a former CREATE Ph.D. student, will continue with their accessibility research as an Apple AI/ML Resident this summer. Mack told CREATE, “I appreciate the connections with community partners that CREATE fosters and encourages me to be a part of.”

Dr. Anthony Osuna is moving on to the position of Acting Assistant Professor in the UW Department of Pediatrics. He’ll be based at Seattle Children’s Research Institute in the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development, where he will launch a research lab focused on digital health equity for people with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). His work will center on developing and evaluating internet safety and digital literacy interventions, and exploring how generative AI and assistive technologies can be used to promote inclusion and health equity for people with IDD.

We equally celebrate that Stacy Hsueh, Jazette Johnson, and Bethany M. Sloane will continue as postdoctoral researchers with CREATE. Emma J. McDonnell will also continue as a participating CREATE postdoc, with a primary appointment in UW Medicine as a National Library of Medicine Postdoctoral Fellow in Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education.

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