Congratulations to Anat Caspi on receiving the 2023 Human Rights Education Award from the Seattle Human Rights Commission!
Caspi is a CREATE associate director and the founder and director of the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology. About the award she said, “I have always thought making an impact on local communities is where it starts,” said Caspi. “The Seattle commission’s focus on disability rights as civil rights serve as a reminder of the importance of collaborative efforts in creating a more inclusive and just society.” She emphasized that it also celebrates the collective efforts of the Taskar Center community.
Those efforts range from the expansive — mapping the accessibility of miles of urban infrastructure — to those of a more human scale. For example, the Taskar Center partnered with not-for-profit Provail Therapy Center to create a library of adapted technology for people with different abilities to borrow for free. The 800 artifacts in the Pacific Northwest Adaptive Technology Library were either donated or created through community education events, where volunteers don protective goggles and get a crash-course in safe use of a soldering iron before adapting battery-operated toys to be switch-accessible for players of different abilities.
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 founding Co-Director, was on a panel discussion at Microsoft’s IdeaGen 2030 event, where he talked about ability-based design. Also on that panel was future CREATE Associate Director Kat Steele. After the event, the two talked with Microsoft Research colleagues, particularly Dr. Meredith Ringel Morris, about the possibility of founding an accessible technology research center at the University of Washington.
Wobbrock and Steele thought that a center could bring faculty together and make them more than the sum of their parts. Within a few months, Wobbrock returned to Microsoft with Jennifer Mankoff, Richard Ladner, and Anat Caspi to pitch Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie, on the idea of supporting the new Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE). With additional support from Microsoft President Brad Smith, and input from Morris, the center was launched by Smith and UW President Ana Marie Cauce at Microsoft’s Ability Summit in Spring 2020.
Wobbrock, along with Mankoff, served as CREATE’s inaugural co-directors until June 2023, when Wobbrock stepped down into an associate director role, with Mankoff leading CREATE as sole Director. “I’m a founder by nature,” Wobbrock said. “I helped start DUB, the MHCI+D degree, a startup called AnswerDash, and then CREATE. I really enjoy establishing new organizations and seeing them take flight. Now that CREATE is soaring, it’s time for more capable hands than mine to pilot the plane. Jennifer Mankoff is one of the best, most capable, energetic, and visionary leaders I know. She will take CREATE into its next chapter and I can’t wait to see what she does.” Wobbrock will still be very active with the center.
Professor Emeritus Richard Ladner, one of CREATE’s founders and our inaugural Education Director
We thank Professor Emeritus Richard Ladner for three years of leadership as one of our founders and CREATE’s inaugural Education Director. Ladner initiated the CREATE Student Minigrant Program that helps fund small grants up to $2,000 in support of student initiated research projects.
Ladner has shepherded 10 minigrants and worked directly with eight Teach Access Study Away students. Through his AccessComputing program, he helped fund several summer research internships for undergraduate students working with CREATE faculty. All CREATE faculty contribute to accessibility related education in their courses, where he provides encouragement.
Anat Caspi defined and elevated CREATE’s translation efforts, leveraging the center’s relationships with partners in industry, disability communities, and academia. Her leadership created sustainable models for translation and built on our prior successes. Collaborations with the TASKAR center, HuskyADAPT, and the UW Disability Studies Program have ensured diverse voices to inform innovation.
Director of Translation duties will be distributed across Mankoff, CREATE’s Community Engagement and Partnerships Manager Kathleen Quin Voss, and the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, which Caspi directs.
A team of CREATE faculty has received a five-year, $1M grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) for the project, “ARRT: Postdoctoral Training in Physical Computing and Fabrication to Support Innovations for Community Living and Participation.” Congratulations on the funding to the team members:
Co-PI Jennifer Mankoff, Ph.D and Professor Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering
Co-PI Anat Caspi, Ph.D. and Principal, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
Heather Feldner, PT, Ph.D., PCS and Assistant Professor, School of Medicine, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine
Kat Steele, Ph.D. and Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
The award funds a program that will train four postdoctoral fellows to become leaders in rehabilitation research who can harness advances in physical computing and fabrication to enhance community living and participation with people with disabilities. Each fellow will complete a 24-month training program to build their expertise in physical computing, fabrication, rehabilitation, and disability studies. Training will address a shortage of people qualified to harness, deliver, and advance physical computing for rehabilitation research. The four postdoctoral fellows will participate in research, coursework, and mentoring that expands expertise in using primary and complex adaptation tools, 3D-modeling software, and fabrication machines (e.g., laser cutters, 3D printers) for rehabilitation applications. Their innovative research, publications, presentations, and community resources will amplify the impacts of this training program.
Anat Caspi participated in a panel discussion on the future of assistive technology and how recent innovations are likely to affect the lives of people with disabilities.
Each day of the event focused on strategies to improve classroom experiences for students and faculty with disabilities. You can watch recorded sessions where speakers provided a wide range of perspectives on computer science pedagogy and how to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in computing disciplines.
Two students work together on a computer screen using accessibility tools.
The event provided an intimate environment to share work and establish new collaborations. The most visible result, for now, is five white papers and action plans taken from the break-out group reports (CREATE faculty contributors noted):
The program resulted in more than conversations; each group developed formal white papers and action plans that will guide future research and collaboration.
Throughout the workshop, participants focused on four areas:
Education for employment pathways
Making K-12 computing education accessible
Making higher education in computing accessible
Building accessible hardware and systems.
Conversations generated ideas about technologies that can boost employment and assist people with disabilities who experience barriers in various learning environments.
Tools like Google Directions and OneBusAway give up-to-date travel and transit information to make regional transit easier for most. But mobility applications focus on efficiency and shortest paths, leaving out information critical to people with disabilities, older adults, and anybody needing more support.
The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the project $11.45 million in January as part of a program focused on promoting independent mobility for all.
“Transportation and mobility play key roles in the struggle for civil rights and equal opportunity. Affordable and reliable transportation allows people access to important opportunities in education, employment, health care, housing and community life,” said project lead Anat Caspi.
“Our goal is to translate the UW’s accessible technology research and data science products into real-world use, building technology foundations for good and avoiding repetition of exclusion patterns of the past or creation of new travel barriers to individuals.”
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.
Anat Caspi and Taskar Center featured on King 5’s New Day Northwest
A familiar face joined Margaret Larson on New Day NW this morning. Anat Caspi, Director of the Taskar Center and Director of Translation for the UW Accessibility Center, shared recent innovations from robotics to smart, sensing environments.
Technology design has taken this stance about designing for the “average” person. And in many cases that is a big design mismatch to the needs and preferences of people who are not the “average” …
Anat Caspi and her team at the Taskar Center designed a table that uses sensors and cameras to adjust to the needs of its users by swiveling and tilting. (Alan Berner / The Seattle Times)
CREATE Director for Translation Anat Caspi shares her research goals and inspiration, including the value of her first programming class and her perspective as a parent.
In her role as the director of the University of Washington’s Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, Caspi creates technology focused on people with disabilities such as motor limitations, in many instances applying artificial intelligence (AI).
“It’s really about treating people as humans with different needs and preferences,” she says.
She sees the mapping of pedestrian infrastructure — walkways, sidewalks, overpasses, underpasses and trails — as a necessary lifeline for people with disabilities. Everyone approaches an environment with different levels of attentiveness and perceptual and motor abilities.
In her role as the director of the University of Washington’s Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, Caspi creates technology focused on people with disabilities such as motor limitations, in many instances applying artificial intelligence (AI).
“It’s really about treating people as humans with different needs and preferences,” she said as a cyclist passing by rang a bell.
She sees the mapping of pedestrian infrastructure — walkways, sidewalks, overpasses, underpasses and trails — as a necessary lifeline for people with disabilities. Everyone approaches an environment with different levels of attentiveness and perceptual and motor abilities.
So Caspi and her Taskar team created a framework to log the features of sidewalk infrastructure in a project called OpenSidewalks, which is now being used by King County’s paratransit service to help people with disabilities navigate any trip. She also helped create AccessMap, an AI-powered online travel planner that identifies surfaces, slopes and obstacles to help users choose the best route for them.
