The 2023 CREATE and HuskyADAPT research showcase brought 25 project presentations and over 100 attendees.
News
Welcome Mark Harniss, CREATE’s New Director for Education
June 13, 2023 CREATE is thrilled to have Mark Harniss as our new Director for Education. Harniss is an associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and director of the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD) and the Center for Technology and Disability. Previously, he was the director of the Disability Studies Program. Harniss’ professional background lies in special education and instructional technology, but his current focus revolves around knowledge translation, assistive technology, accessible information technology (IT),…
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 Director Jennifer Mankoff. Co-Director Jacob O. Wobbrock: From vision, to launch, to sustainable leadership It was back in June 2019 that Jacob O. Wobbrock, CREATE’s…
Codesigning Videoconferencing Tools for Small Groups with Mixed Hearing Status
June 12, 2023 CREATE students and faculty have published a new paper at CHI 2023, ‘Easier or Harder, Depending on Who the Hearing Person Is’: Codesigning Videoconferencing Tools for Small Groups with Mixed Hearing Status”. Led by Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) Ph.D. candidate Emma McDonnell and supported by CREATE, this work investigates how groups with both hearing and d/Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) members could be better supported when using captions during videoconferences. Researchers recruited four groups…
Grant Opportunity: Disability Inclusion
June 11, 2023 The U.S. Department of Labor has made available $2 million for the first year of a cooperative agreement for an employer-focused, disability policy development and technical assistance center. From the EARN announcement website: The purpose of this program is to identify and promote adoption of innovative and equitable evidence-based policy and practice solutions to help public and private sector employers of all sizes recruit, hire, retain, and advance people with disabilities, including those from historically underserved communities. The…
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 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 Plans: Elija will start as an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines in the Mechanical Engineering Department in January…
CREATE Ph.D. Student Emma McDonnell Wins Dennis Lang Award
June 6, 2023 Congratulations to Emma McDonnell on receiving a Dennis Lang Award from the UW Disability Studies program! McDonnell, a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in Human Centered Design & Engineering, is advised by CREATE associate director Leah Findlater. McDonnell’s research focuses on accessible communication technologies and explores how these tools could be designed to engage non-disabled people in making their communication approaches more accessible. She has studied how real-time captioning is used during videoconferencing and her current work is…
User-informed, robot-assisted social dining for people with motor impairments
June 1, 2023 A team of Allen School robotics researchers has published a paper on the finer aspects of robot-assisted dining with friends. “A meal should be memorable, and not for a potential faux pas from the machine,” notes co-author Patrícia Alves-Oliveira. Supported by a CREATE Student minigrant and in the spirit of “nothing about us without us,” they are working with the Tyler Schrenk Foundation to address the design of robot-assisted feeding systems that facilitate meaningful social dining experiences. The team is led by Ph.D. student Amal Nanavati, postdoc Patrícia Alves-Oliveira and includes CREATE…
Director of Strategy & Operations, CREATE Center
The University of Washington’s Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE) seeks a Director of Strategy and Operations to join our team as a key leader to help steward this new multidisciplinary center that involves faculty from multiple units across campus. Working in close collaboration with the Center’s Faculty Leadership Team, the Director of Strategy and Operations will have the overall responsibility of developing and overseeing organizational strategy, designing and implementing a diverse array of programs,…
Grant Opportunity for Disability Policy, Assistance
May 25, 2023 The U.S. Department of Labor has made available $2 million for the first year of a cooperative agreement for an employer-focused, disability policy development and technical assistance center. The Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN) helps employers, human resources professionals, and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility staff find the resources they need to recruit, hire, retain and advance people with disabilities. The deadline for application is June 23, 2023Full announcement and application instructions EARN’s…
Undergraduate Research with CREATE researchers this summer!
Undergrads, a 10-week summer research position is available with an interdisciplinary team led by CREATE associate directors Kat Steele, Heather Felder, and CREATE faculty member Kim Ingraham. The student researcher will study how early access to powered mobility experiences can impact toddlers with disabilities across developmental, movement, and language domains. To apply, email your resumé/CV and a paragraph explaining your interest in the position, plus any other relevant information to Kim Ingraham.
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…
A11yBoard Seeks to Make Digital Artboards Accessible to Blind and Low-Vision Users
Just about everybody in business, education, and artistic settings needs to use presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Adobe Illustrator. These tools use artboards to hold objects such as text, shapes, images, and diagrams. But for blind and low vision (BLV) people, using such software adds a new level of challenge beyond keeping our bullet points short and images meaningful. They experience: Screen readers, which were built for 1-D text information, don’t handle 2-D information spaces like artboards…
Postdoc Research Spotlight: Making Biosignal Interfaces Accessible
April 11, 2023 The machines and devices we use every day – for example, touch screens, gas pedals, and computer track pads – interpret our actions and intentions via sensors. But these sensors are designed based on assumptions about our height, strength, dexterity, and abilities. When they aim for the average person (who does not actually exist), they aren’t usable or accessible. CREATE Post-doctoral student Momona Yamagami seeks to integrate personalization and customization into sensor design and the resulting algorithms…
Accessible eSports Showcase 2023: Event Recap
In April 2023, CREATE hosted its first ever Accessible eSports Showcase event, bringing together members of the CREATE community, local community organizations, tech and games Corporate Partners, and folks from all over the Seattle area looking to learn about and celebrate ongoing strides being made in making video games more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities. Zillow Commons in the Bill & Melinda Gates Center was transformed into a gamer’s playground with big-screen projections of racing and party games,…
International Disability Rights: Past, Present, & Future – A Must-See Public Lecture with Senator Floyd Morris
International Disability Rights: Past, Present, & FuturePublic Lecture with Senator Floyd Morris Wednesday, April 19, 2023, 2:30 p.m. HUB 340Free and open to the public Floyd Morris, Ph.D., is the Director of the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of the West Indies, a current Member and Past President of the Senate of Jamaica – where he was also their first Blind member – and Special Rapporteur on Disability for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). He has researched inclusion of…
Advisory Board: Welcome ChrisTiana ObeySumner
CREATE welcomes our newest Advisory Board member, ChrisTiana ObeySumner. ObeySumner (they/them) is the CEO and principal consultant of Epiphanies of Equity, a social equity consulting firm specializing in change management, social and organizational psychology, intersectional equity and liberation, and disability justice. For two decades, they’ve dedicated their life and career to exploring and practicing innovative approaches to achieving social equity – in other words, how to sustainably and effectively bring parity to areas of disparity so “humans can human with…
Faculty essay: Signs of Disability
By Stephanie Kerschbaum, CREATE faculty member, Associate Professor of English, and Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric I’ve just returned to Seattle from a trip to a conference in Chicago. On that trip, I pointed out to a friend a billboard in a downtown Chicago bus stop inviting viewers to learn to recognize the signs of a rare medical condition. And just a bit later, at my gate in O’Hare, I found myself sitting across from a large…
Teach Access Study Away program
There is a wonderful, free short course, Teach Access Study Away, run by the Teach Access organization each year. The 2023 Teach Access Virtual Study Away is a two-part series. Part 1 focuses on the basics of accessibility and disability; Part 2 covers more advanced topics so completion of Part 1 or a previous Study Access Away session is required. The two parts combined total 7 virtual sessions, each 1 1/2 hours on Wednesdays starting on April 5th. Signup for 2023…
CSE course sequence designed with “accessibility from the start”
The CSE 121, 122, and 123 introductory course sequence lets students choose their entry point into computer science and engineering studies, whatever their background, experience, or confidence level. And, as part of the effort to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), the courses were designed with “accessibility from the start.” A member of the course development team was a dedicated accessibility expert, tasked with developing guidelines for producing accessible materials: using HTML tags correctly, providing alt text for all…