Jacob O. Wobbrock news articles
October 30, 2023
UW News: A11yBoard accessible presentation software
October 30, 2023 | UW News A team led by CREATE researchers has created A11yBoard for Google Slides, a browser extension and phone or tablet app that allows blind users to navigate through complex slide layouts, objects, images, and text. Here, a user demonstrates the touchscreen interface. Team members Zhuohao (Jerry) Zhang, Jacob O. Wobbrock,…
July 7, 2023
CREATE Open Source Projects Awarded at Web4All
July 6, 2023 CREATE researchers shone this spring at the 2023 Web4All 2023 conference that, in part, seeks to “make the internet more accessible to the more than one billion people who struggle to interact with digital content each day due to neurodivergence, disability or other impairments.” Two CREATE-funded open source projects won accolades. Best…
June 13, 2023
Deep Gratitude to Wobbrock, Ladner & Caspi
June 13, 2023 The CREATE community thanks three of our founding leaders for their energy and service in launching the center as we embark upon some transitions. “CREATE would not be where it is today without the vision, passion, and commitment that Jake, Richard, and Anat brought to their work leading the center,” says CREATE…
January 5, 2023
Jacob O. Wobbrock awarded Ten-Year Technical Impact Award
January 5, 2023 The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has honored CREATE Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock and colleagues with a 10-year lasting impact award for their groundbreaking work improving how computers recognize stroke gestures. Wobbrock, a professor in the Information School, and co-authors Radu-Daniel Vatavu and Lisa Anthony were presented with the 2022 Ten Year Technical Impact…
November 16, 2022
Wobbrock Co-leads ACM UIST Conference, Brings Accessibility to the Conversation
CREATE founding Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock served as General Co-Chair for ACM User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2022, held at the end of October. Nearly 500 people traveled to beautiful Bend, OR to share their latest innovations in user interface software and technology from fabrication and materials, to VR and AR, to interactive tools…
October 6, 2022
Large-Scale Analysis Finds Many Mobile Apps Are Inaccessible
Mobile apps have become a key feature of everyday life, with apps for banking, work, entertainment, communication, transportation, and education, to name a few. But many apps remain inaccessible to people with disabilities who use screen readers or other assistive technologies. Any person who uses an assistive technology can describe negative experiences with apps that…
August 3, 2022
Ga11y improves accessibility of automated GIFs for visually impaired users
Animated GIFs, prevalent in social media, texting platforms and websites, often lack adequate alt-text descriptions, resulting in inaccessible GIFs for blind or low-vision (BLV) users and the loss of meaning, context, and nuance in what they read. In an article published in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI…
June 7, 2022
Wobbrock team’s VoxLens allows screen-reader users to interact with data visualizations
Working with screen-reader users, CREATE graduate student Ather Sharif and Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock, along with other UW researchers, have designed VoxLens, a JavaScript plugin that allows people to interact with visualizations. To implement VoxLens, visualization designers add just one line of code. Millions of Americans use screen readers for a variety of reasons, including…
January 26, 2022
CREATE Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock Named ACM Fellow
We congratulate CREATE Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock on being named an ACM Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery for his contributions to human-computer interaction and accessible computing! Wobbrock’s research seeks to understand and improve people’s interactions with computers and information, especially for people with disabilities. He is the primary creator of ability-based design, which scrutinizes…
October 13, 2020
UW CREATE leadership at ASSETS 2020
UW CREATE has a large and quality presence at ASSETS 2020, the premier annual conference for accessible computing research. Drawing from three departments, University of Washington authors contributed to six papers and two posters to be presented at this year’s online conference. Three of our papers were nominated for best paper! Seven members also served…
July 29, 2020
AccessComputing shares UW CREATE’s launch and work toward accessibility
CREATE faculty are already internationally recognized for their contributions to assistive technology and accessible computing; by bringing them together under one organizational roof, CREATE will enable synergies and foster collaborations that enable faculty and students to become more than the sum of their parts.
May 28, 2020
Q&A with Jacob Wobbrock on UW’S new accessible technology research center
iSchool news, University of Washington | May 28, 2020 Jacob O. Wobbrock, CREATE Co-Director and a professor in the UW Information School, has become one of the world’s foremost experts on accessible computing and human-computer interaction. His approach is to create interactive systems that can capitalize on the situated abilities of users, whatever they are, rather…
New UW center bankrolled by Microsoft aims to make technology more accessible to disabled people
The Seattle Times | May 28, 2020 University of Washington professor Jacob Wobbrock figures the best way to make technology more accessible to disabled people is to anticipate their needs from the very beginning. “The world we live in is built on certain assumptions,’’ Wobbrock said. “If we question those assumptions right from the start when…
November 1, 2019
ASSETS Paper Impact Award
Jacob Wobbrock honored for improving touch-screen accessibility Congratulations to Jacob O. Wobbrock, a founding co-director of CREATE, for his work with Shaun Kane, PhD ’11 and Jeffrey Bigham, PhD ’09 improving the accessibility of mobile technology. The team received the 2019 SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award for their 2008 paper, “Slide Rule: Making mobile touch screens accessible…
