March 5, 2026
Richard Ladner, CREATE’s Founding Director for Education Emeritus and a continuing CREATE faculty member, received the 2026 Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education Award at the ACM SIGCSE Conference.
The award cited Ladner’s contributions to accessible computer science education at the K-12, college, and graduate levels and was given “in recognition of long-lasting efforts to develop new technologies and activities to engage people, particularly children, in creative learning experiences based on computational literacy for discovery and expression.”
Richard Ladner, CREATE founding Director for Education Emeritus and Professor Emeritus, Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
Ladner’s work has had a profound impact on the accessibility of CS education, the inclusion of accessibility in the computing curriculum, and the inclusion of disability in broadening participation activities.
The ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education honors researchers who have made a long-lasting impact and significant contribution to computing education.
Through mentoring and advocacy, Ladner has directly helped hundreds of students with disabilities to gain exposure to computing as a potential career path. A handful of examples:
- AccessComputing‘s principal investigator and founder. AccessComputing has supported over 1,500 high school, undergraduate, and graduate students in building skills and connections with mentors and professional opportunities in computing-related fields.
- Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing, co-founder. The summer academy helped students jump start their academic careers by spending the summer taking computing courses at the UW’s Seattle campus. Three of those students became computing faculty themselves.
- AccessCSforAll‘s Founding PI and continuing advisor. AccessCSforAll provides accessible computer science curriculum and other resources available to K–12 students with disabilities. Their paper describing the work received the SIGCSE 2019 Best Paper Award.
- “Teaching Accessibility” co-editor with Alannah Oleson and CREATE faculty member Amy Ko. The online book provides computing instructors with tools and resources to help them incorporate accessibility into their teaching.
- More papers: The importance of teaching and learning about accessibility, and Outlining strategies for integrating accessibility into various computer science courses.
This article was excerpted from the Allen School article about Ladner’s career at UW as a professor in computer science & engineering.