December 20, 2024 At HuskyADAPT‘s holiday toy adaptation event in November, about 80 volunteers adapted toys, ranging from a baseball pitching machine and spinning art kit to lava lamps, remote control cars and a bilingual play drum. The volunteers connected the toys to a switch that can make it easier for children with disabilities to interact with the object in a way that’s accessible to them, such as pressing a button, moving their head or blowing air. For example, a…
News
Former CREATE postdoc Sasha Portnova talks about her experiences and inspirations
November 22, 2024 Dr. Alexandra (Sasha) Portnova, who was a postdoctoral research with CREATE in 2022-24, was interviewed about those experiences as a NIDILRR-funded fellow and about her work in rehabilitation research. In the National Rehabilitation Information Center interview, Portnova spoke about the value of the CREATE ARRT fellowship in transitioning from the overwhelming life as a Ph.D. student into a faculty career. Currently, Portnova is a research scientist in the Neuromechanics & Mobility Lab, directed by CREATE associate director…
Not just a wheelchair: Disability representation in AI
November 19, 2024 CREATE Ph.D. graduate Kelly Avery Mack led research that investigated how AI represented people with disabilities. Specifically, Mack’s team wanted to know if AI-produced images and image descriptions perpetuated bias or showed positive portrayals of disability. The team included four research scientists from Google Research: Rida Qadri, Remi Denton, new CREATE Advisory Board member Shaun K. Kane, and Cynthia L. Bennett, Ph.D., UW Human Centered Design and Engineering. Examples of positive disability representation in AI-generated images where…
HuskyADAPT Mini Hackathon: Adaptive Solutions
November 18, 2024 This month, CREATE’s ARRT postdocs postdocs and HuskyADAPT students partnered with our partners King County Library Systems (KCLS) and Washington Assistive Technology Act Program (WATAP) to put on an impressive and successful hackfest. The goal was to design adaptations to everyday challenges for people with disabilities. All six teams came up with innovative solutions. No prizes were given out, but the best “prize” is that there is a plan to further develop the most feasible solutions and give…
Mobile 3D printer can autonomously add accessibility features to a room
October 29, 2024 Built on a modified consumer vacuum robot, MobiPrint can automatically measure a room and print objects onto its floor to add accessibility features, home customizations, or artistic flourishes to the space. The prototype was built by a research team in the Makeability Lab. The team, led by CREATE Ph.D. student Daniel Campos Zamora and CREATE associate director Jon E. Froehlich, customized a graphic interface that lets users design objects that the robot has mapped out. The team…
Paper by Jaewook Lee and Jon E. Froehlich earns recognition
October 8, 2024 People with low vision face hazards in the kitchen – namely sharp knives and hot pans. A research team led by CREATE Ph.D. student Jaewook Lee and including CREATE associate director Jon E. Froehlich authored CookAR: Affordance Augmentations in Wearable AR to Support Kitchen Tool Interactions for People with Low Vision. CookAR is a head-mounted augmented reality (AR) system designed to support safe and efficient interactions with kitchen tools. The team collected and annotated the first egocentric…
CREATE at ASSETS 2024: Papers & Workshops
September 25, 2024 If we missed any CREATE research, please email Liz Diether-Martin with the details. Awards ASSETS 2024 Best Paper Award:Engaging with Children’s Artwork in Mixed Visual-Ability FamiliesArnavi Chheda-Kothary, Jacob O. Wobbrock (CREATE associate director), Jon E. Froehlich (CREATE associate director) ASSETS 2024 Best Demo Award:Touchpad Mapper: Examining Information Consumption from 2D Digital Content Using Touchpads by Screen CREATE Ph.D. alumni Ather Sharif and Venkatesh Potluri, Jazz Ang (CREATE Master’s student), Jacob O. Wobbrock (CREATE associate director), Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director) Papers…
Ability-Based Design Mobile Toolkit: Developer Support for Runtime Interface Adaptation
Despite significant progress, most apps remain oblivious to their users’ abilities. To enable apps to respond to users’ situated abilities, CREATE researchers developed the Ability-Based Design Mobile Toolkit (ABD-MT). ABD-MT integrates with an app’s user input and sensors to observe a user’s touches, gestures, physical activities, and attention at runtime to measure and model these abilities, and to adapt interfaces accordingly. With the goal of optimizing user interfaces to better suit users’ abilities, earlier systems attempt to create the “optimal”…
CREATE awarded $4.6M for research on AI risks, opportunities for people with disabilities
September 10, 2024 CREATE will be leading a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on participatory, assistive, inclusive, and responsible use of AI technology, funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), a program of the Administration for Community Living, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The interdisciplinary team of researchers involved with this RERC come from the College of Engineering, the Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, the Information School, Disability Studies, and…
Feldner team funded to study health outcomes
September 9, 2024 The collaboration, including researchers from the UW Department of Rehabilitation, the UW iSchool, and the University of Pittsburgh, is funded by a 5-year, $3.2 million NIH R01 grant — the first funding of its kind from the NIH to support ableism and health disparity research. “The long-term goal of this work is to reduce disparities and maximize participation, health, and quality of life in partnership with people with mobility disabilities. This work will leverage our team’s multidisciplinary…
CREATE researchers find ChatGPT biased against resumes that imply disability, models improvement
June 24, 2024 This is the takeaway from CREATE Ph.D. student Kate Glazko, who got curious when she noticed recruiters posting online that they’d used OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools to summarize resumes and rank candidates. Advised by co-author and CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff in the Allen School, Glazko studies how GAI can replicate and amplify real-world biases — such as those against disabled people. So how might such a system, she wondered, rank resumes that implied someone had a disability?…
Breaking Barriers with an Emotion Translator: A Glimpse into the Future of Communication
June 20, 2024 Autistic individuals can face difficulty navigating social and emotional interactions, leading to exclusion, misunderstandings, and stress. CREATE faculty member Annuska Zolyomi presented research at CHI 2024 that seeks to tackle these difficulties through a novel approach. Zolyomi, an assistant professor of Computing & Software Systems at UW Bothell, and co-author Jaime Snyder, an Associate Professor at the UW Information School, asked autistic adults to imagine futuristic technology that could translate emotions just as spoken languages are translated. The result was a…
Anat Caspi speaks at White House panel on AI in Transportation
June 17, 2024 CREATE associate director Anat Caspi spoke on ‘Mapping, Visualizing, and Building the Future’ as part of a White House panel on AI in Transportation. Focused on developing a national transportation infrastructure observatory and an accompanying application ecosystem, the panel gathered innovators in transportation, aiming to align end users, researchers, entrepreneurs, and federal agencies while addressing privacy, cybersecurity, and policy challenges. Dr. Caspi highlighted the Taskar Center’s pioneering work on AI and transportation, particularly through the Transportation Data…
Gatzert Child Welfare Fellowship for Reham Abuatiq
June 13, 2024 Advised by CREATE associate director Heather Feldner, Abuatiq’s dissertation work explores the Healthcare Transition of Middle Eastern Youth with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and their Families. Using both qualitative and participatory methods, her research goals are to: Abuatiq is currently working with one of CREATE’s community partners, Open Doors for Multicultural Families (ODMF), which provides grassroots community-based services and supports for immigrants and refugees in the WA area living with disabilities. ODMF plans to host a photo exhibition in…
Congrats to CREATE’s Graduating Ph.D. Students 2024!
May 30, 2024 Four of CREATE’s influential and productive doctoral students are graduating this spring. Please join us in congratulating Kelly Avery Mack, Emma McDonnell, Venkatesh Potluri, Ather Sharif, and Rachel Franz and wishing them well. Profiles With too many accomplishments amongst them to list here, these almost-minted Ph.D.s collaborated on projects that have contributed to CREATE’s growth and success. In addition to mentoring undergraduate students, publishing and presenting papers, and working in labs and with researchers, here are a…
CREATE Students Honored in Husky100
Two students selected for the 2024 Husky 100 exemplify CREATE’s mission to make technology accessible and make the world accessible through technology while involving people with lived disability experiences in their research. Kianna Bolante Ethan Gordon
CREATE Papers and Presentations at CHI 2024
This is a work in progress as there are many papers and presentations from CREATE researchers at CHI 2024, the ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. We appreciate your patience! For a list of all papers from UW researchers, see DUB’s roundoup. Papers A Virtual Reality Scene Taxonomy: Identifying and Designing Accessible Scene-Viewing Techniques Rachel L. Franz, UW Information School (iSchool); Sasa Junuzovic, Microsoft; Martez E Mott, Microsoft. An Emotion Translator: Speculative Design by Neurodiverse Dyads Annuska…
Hard Mode: Accessibility, Difficulty and Joy for Gamers With Disabilities
Video games often pose accessibility barriers to gamers with disabilities, but there is no standard method for identifying which games have barriers, what those barriers are, and whether and how they can be overcome. CREATE and Allen School Ph.D. student Jesse Martinez has been working to understand the strategies and resources gamers with disabilities regularly use when trying to identify a game to play and the challenges disabled gamers face in this process, with the hopes of advising the games…
Amy Ko named ACM Distinguished Member
March 18, 2024 Congratulations to CREATE faculty Amy J. Ko, who has been recognized as a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for her work on human-centered theories of program understanding and the development of tools and learning technologies. “I’m honored to be recognized by my nominators, all of whom have been role models and mentors in my career,” said Ko, a professor in the iSchool. “It makes me want to pay their giving and caring work forward to more junior…
Empowering users with disabilities through customized interfaces for assistive robots
March 15, 2024 For people with severe physical limitations such as quadriplegia, the ability to tele-operate personal assistant robots could bring a life-enhancing level of independence and self-determination. Allen School Ph.D. candidate Vinitha Ranganeni and her advisor, CREATE faculty member Maya Cakmak, have been working to understand and meet the needs of users of assistive robots. This month, Ranganeni and Cakmak presented a video at the Human Robot Interaction (HRI) conference that illustrates the practical (and touching) ways deploying an…