Papers, presentations, and workshops from CREATE researchers at CHI 2025, the ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. We appreciate your patience as we continue to update this page.
The conference takes place April 26 - May 1 in Yokohama Japan.
Autoethnographic Insights from Neurodivergent GAI "Power Users"
Kate S. Glazko (CREATE Ph.D. student), JunHyeok Cha, Aaleyah Lewis (CREATE Ph.D. student), Ben Kosa, Brianna L. Wimer, Andrew Zheng, Roy Zheng, Jennifer Mankoff (CREATE Director).
Exploring AI-Based Support in Speech-Language Pathology for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children
Aaleyah Lewis (CREATE Ph.D. student), Aayushi Dangol; Hyewon Suh; Abbie Olszewski; James Fogarty (CREATE associate director) Julie A. Kientz (CREATE faculty).
"I want to think like an SLP": A Design Exploration of AI-Supported Home Practice in Speech Therapy
Aayushi Dangol, Aaleyah Lewis (CREATE Ph.D. student), Hyewon Suh, Xuesi Hong, Hedda Meadan, James Fogarty (CREATE associate director), Julie A. Kientz (CREATE faculty).
Inaccessible and Deceptive: Examining Experiences of Deceptive Design with People Who Use Visual Accessibility Technology
Wordplay: Accessible, Multilingual Interactive Typography. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Amy J. Ko (CREATE faculty), Carlos Aldana Lira, Isabel Amaya.
Presentations
To be announced
Workshops
To be announced
Student Games Competition
Accepted entries in the Student Games Competition (SGC) are the top 10 finalists from two tracks: Transformative and Transgressive Play and Innovative Interfaces. Entries will be further judged at the conference, and a winner chosen for each track.
OURCADE: A Game to Solve Real-World Game Accessibility Puzzles Jesse Martinez | Transformative and Transgressive Play track
The UW’s Population Health Initiative announced two fellowships that may be of interest to CREATE graduate and undergraduate students.
Accessibility of King County parks
Graduate and undergraduate students from all UW schools and colleges are encouraged to apply for the Population Health Applied Research Fellowship on the accessibility of King County Parks. The Summer 2025 fellowship team will collaborate with the King County Demographer and King County Parks to assess park accessibility.
This paid fellowship program offers training in data analysis techniques as well as in research and presentation skills, while they develop a work product for an external partner. Students will combine quantitative methods with field research to provide insights into physical access networks around parks, helping prioritize improvements to ensure all residents can enjoy these green spaces.
Register to attend the March 3, 12–1 p.m. info session, in person on the Seattle campus or virtually.
Four fellows will be selected from a variety of disciplines to investigate projects focused on finding innovative ways to maintain the balance between financial sustainability and social impact. Of particular interest:
Virtual Study Assistant for Potential Research Participants, a bilingual virtual study assistant that seeks to support recruitment and screening in research studies, leveraging AI to improve accessibility and reduce resource needs while ensuring careful consideration of potential biases in machine translations.
The Population Health Initiative is partnering with the UW’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship and CoMotion to offer its summer Social Entrepreneurship Fellows Program.
We've rounded up some great opportunities for accessibility research, funding, and training. Most notably, deadlines are approaching for two CREATE grants:
CREATE Seed funding
For projects that push boundaries and try new things, or need opportunistic funding in response to a new student, collaboration, or flash of insight.
A two-day, free, virtual workshop for all, whether new to accessibility or deepening understanding, college or university student, or lifelong learner. The featured keynote speaker is Haben Girma, renowned human rights lawyer and the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School.
February 20 – 21, 8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Registration is free!
Highly recommended by CREATE Director for Education Emeritus, Richard Ladner. And CREATE Ph.D. graduate Emma McDonnell is presenting on day 1!
We are excited to announce that CREATE has been awarded a five-year, $4.6 million grant to advance crucial research on artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GAI). Research and development projects will explore questions about recent developments in AI and GAI: What risks do they pose for people with disabilities? And what opportunities might they offer for improving accessibility?
For some time now, CREATE researchers have been exploring these pressing questions. And now, 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 Rehabilitation Medicine. Aligning with CREATE’s mission and vision, the CREATE-RERC projects will be guided, informed, and led by people with disabilities, toward the goal of creating accessible technologies.
Research projects
The CREATE-RERC research projects investigate bias, privacy, and security risks when GAI is used in assistive technology contexts and for accessibility, and they explore possibilities for addressing these risks. Both projects focus on multiply-marginalized people with disabilities. One research project collects the first-ever dataset about GAI’s inclusiveness and privacy and security risks. The other research project investigates the indirect risks for multiply-marginalized people with disabilities when GAI is used “on” them i.e., to rank their resumes. The project also explores methods that will allow people with disabilities to mitigate these risks.
Development projects
The development projects of the CREATE-RERC seek to place people with disabilities as full participants in the design of responsible AI and GAI. First, we will develop disability-led solutions for one of the biggest unmet needs in accessibility today: text simplification. Simply put, most documents are not accessible to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and current text-simplification efforts rely on the availability of people with text simplification expertise to check and validate the outputs.
“This award recognizes the research excellence that has defined CREATE since its inception four years ago. All members of our CREATE community—researchers, students, community partners, and industry partners—have contributed to putting CREATE at the front and center of efforts to advance accessible technologies. We are honored that NIDILRR has awarded CREATE, and by implication our community, the funding that supports our work ensuring that emerging technologies are accessible for everyone.”
Dr. Jennifer Mankoff, Director of CREATE and the Richard E. Ladner Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
Our first development project aims for on-demand, self-directed text simplification that can also allow for independent fact checking and validation. Second, we incorporate AI to improve the accessibility of the creativity tool crucial in white-collar work, slideshow creation. Our third development project allows people with disabilities to generate multiple fabricated variations on proven solutions for home adaptation. The fourth project collects open-source accessibility supports at a hub that is easy for the disability community to find and that is accessible to use, at a11yhood.org.
PI: Jennifer Mankoff, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering (College of Engineering)
Co-PI:Mark Harniss, Associate Professor, Rehabilitation Medicine (UW Medicine)
Other team members: Anat Caspi, Director of the Taskar Center (Allen School, College of Engineering), Jacob O. Wobbrock (Information School), Olivia Banner (CREATE Operations, Disability Studies Program), Joshua Miele (Amazon Lab126 Accessibility Research), Tony Fast (Distinguished Project Jupyter Contributor), Kathleen Voss (CREATE Community Engagement and Partnerships), Liz Diether-Martin (CREATE Digital Communications)
