Accessibility-Related UW Courses

New Book: Teaching Accessible Computing

March 14, 2024

A new, free, and community-sourced online book helps Computer Science educators integrate accessibility topics into their classes. Teaching Accessibility provides the foundations of accessibility relevant to computer science teaching and then presents teaching methods for integrating those topics into course designs.

The editors are Alannah Oleson, a postdoctoral scholar and co-founder at the UW Center for Learning, Computing, and Imagination (LCI), CREATE and iSchool faculty Amy Ko, and Richard Ladner, CREATE Director of Education Emeritus. You may recognize many CREATE faculty members’ research referenced throughout the guide. CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff and CREATE Ph.D. student Avery Kelly Mack contributed a foundational chapter that advocates for teaching inclusively in addition to teaching about accessibility.

Letting the book speak for itself

"... we’ve designed this book as a free, open, living, web-first document. It’s free thanks to a National Science Foundation grant (NSF No. 2137312) that has funded our time to edit and publish the book. It’s open in that you can see and comment on the book at any time, creating community around its content. It’s living in that we expect it to regularly change and evolve as the community of people integrating accessibility into their CS courses grows and evolves. And it’s web-first in that the book is designed first and foremost as an accessible website to be read on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices, rather than as a print book or PDF. This ensures that everyone can read it, but also that it can be easily changed and updated as our understandings of how to teach accessibility in CS evolve."

Introduction by Alannah Oleson, Amy J. Ko, Richard Ladner

"To write these chapters, we recruited some of the world’s experts on accessible computing and teaching accessible computing, giving them a platform to share both their content knowledge about how accessibility intersects with specific CS topics, but also their pedagogical content knowledge about how to teach those intersections in CS courses."

Introduction by Alannah Oleson, Amy J. Ko, Richard Ladner

Read more

Augmented Reality to Support Accessibility

October 25, 2023

RASSAR – Room Accessibility and Safety Scan in Augmented Reality – is a novel smartphone-based prototype for semi-automatically identifying, categorizing, and localizing indoor accessibility and safety issues. With RASSAR, the user holds out their phone and scans a space. The tool uses LiDAR and camera data, real-time machine learning, and AR to construct a real-time model of the 3D scene, attempts to identify and classify known accessibility and safety issues, and visualizes potential problems overlaid in AR. 

RASSAR researchers envision the tool as an aid in the building and validation of new construction, planning renovations, or updating homes for health concerns, or for telehealth home visits with occupational therapists. UW News interviewed two CREATE Ph.D. students about their work on the project:

Read more

Research at the Intersection of Race, Disability and Accessibility

October 13, 2023

What are the opportunities for research to engage the intersection of race and disability?

What is the value of considering how constructs of race and disability work alongside each other within accessibility research studies?

Two CREATE Ph.D. students have explored these questions and found little focus on this intersection within accessibility research. In their paper, Working at the Intersection of Race, Disability and Accessibility (PDF), they observe that we’re missing out on the full nuance of marginalized and "otherized" groups. 

The Allen School Ph.D. students, Aashaka Desai and Aaleyah Lewis, and collaborators will present their findings at the ASSETS 2023 conference on Tuesday, October 24.

Spurred by the conversation at the Race, Disability & Technology research seminar earlier in the year, members of the team realized they lacked a framework for thinking about work at this intersection. In response, they assembled a larger team to conduct an analysis of existing work and research with accessibility research.

The resulting paper presents a review of considerations for engaging with race and disability in the research and education process. It offers analyses of exemplary papers, highlights opportunities for intersectional engagement, and presents a framework to explore race and disability research. Case studies exemplify engagement at this intersection throughout the course of research, in designs of socio-technical systems, and in education. 

   Case studies

• Representation in image descriptions: How to describe appearance, factoring preferences for self-descriptions of identity, concerns around misrepresentation by others, interest in knowing others’ appearance, and guidance for AI-generated image descriptions.
• Experiences of immigrants with disabilities: Cultural barriers that include cultural disconnects and levels of stigma about disability between refugees and host countries compound language barriers.
• Designing for intersectional, interdependent accessibility: How access practices as well as cultural and racial practices influence every stage of research design, method, and dissemination, in the context of work with communities of translators.

Authors

• Christina N. Harrington, Assistant Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon 
• Aashaka Desai, Ph.D. student in the Allen School, advised by Jennifer Mankoff and Richard Ladner
• Aaleyah Lewis, Ph.D. student in the Allen School, advised by James Fogarty
• Sanika Moharana, Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon
• Anne Spencer Ross, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Bucknell University
• CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff

Read more

CREATE's Newest Ph.D Graduates

June 9, 2023

We're proud to see these talented, passionate students receive their Ph.D.s and excited to see how they continue their work in accessibility.

Alyssa Spomer, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Dissertation: Evaluating multimodal biofeedback to target and improve motor control in cerebral palsy

Advisor: Kat Steele

Honors, awards and articles:

• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and TL1 Fellowship
• Husky 100 in 2020
• Mechanical Engineering feature article Supporting Mobility in Cerebral Palsy
• HuskyADAPT Student Chair

Current: Clinical Scientist at Gillette Children's Hospital, leading research in the Gillette Rehabilitation Department to improve healthcare outcomes for children with complex movement conditions.

Elijah Kuska, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Dissertation: In Silico Techniques to Improve Understanding of Gait in Cerebral Palsy

Advisor: Kat Steele

Honors, awards and articles:

• TL1 Fellowship
• Mechanical Engineering article Making an impact through research and teaching

Plans: Elija will start as an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines in the Mechanical Engineering Department in January 2024.

Megan Ebers, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Dissertation: Machine learning for dynamical models of human movement

Advisors: Kat Steele and Nathan Kutz

Awards, honors and articles:

• Dual Ph.D.s in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Math
• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Plans: Megan will join the UW AI Institute as a postdoc in Spring of 2023 to pursue clinical translation of her methods to evaluate digital biomarkers to support health and function from wearable data. 

Nicole Zaino, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Dissertation: Walking and rolling: Evaluating technology to support multimodal mobility for individuals with disabilities

Advisors: Kat Steele and Heather Feldner

Awards, honors and articles: 

• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, 2018 - Present
• Gatzert Child Welfare Fellowship, University of Washington, 2022
• Best Paper Award at the European Society of Movement Analysis for Adults and Children, 2019.
• Finalist, International Society of Biomechanics David Winter Young Investigator Award, 2019

Plans: Nicole is headed to Bozeman Montana to join the Crosscut Elite Training team to work toward joining the national paralympic nordic ski team for Milano-Cortina 2026, while working part-time with academia and industry partners. 

Ricky Zhang

Dissertation: Pedestrian Path Network Mapping and Assessment with Scalable Machine Learning Approaches

Advisors: Anat Caspi and Linda Shapiro

Plans: Ricky will be a postdoc in Bill Howe’s lab at the University of Washington.

Kat Steele, who has been busy advising four out of five of these new PH.D.s, noted, "We have an amazing crew of graduate students continuing and expanding upon much of this work. We're excited for new collaborations and translating these methods into the clinic and community."

Read 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.

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, 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

“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

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. 

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.”

Read more