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Richard Ladner Receives 2020 Public Service Award from National Science Board

National Science Board | August 11, 2020

Richard Ladner, Founder of AccessComputing and Allen School faculty member

Dr. Richard Ladner, CREATE’s Director for Education, has been named the 2020 recipient of the Public Service Award for an individual from the National Science Board (NSB). In recognizing Ladner, the board cited his exemplary science communication, diversity advocacy, and well-earned reputation as the “conscience of computing.”

“When we think about diversity, we must include disability as part of that. The conversation about diversity should always include disability.”

Richard Ladner, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

From his foundational experiences as a graduate student teaching hands-on mathematics in his community to co-founding AccessComputing, Dr. Ladner has spent his career educating and changing the conversation on diversity. In recognizing Ladner, the National Science Board (NSB) cited his exemplary science communication, diversity advocacy, and well-earned reputation as the “conscience of computing.”

“When we think about diversity, we must include disability as part of that. The conversation about diversity should always include disability,” said Ladner.

As a faculty member, now Professor Emeritus, in the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, he has mentored 136 students, including 30 Ph.D. students. “I visited Richard’s lab at the University of Washington just over 10 years ago. While I did get to see Richard, he was most interested in my meeting his Ph.D. students — and I could see why,” recalled Vicki Hanson, CEO of the Association for Computing Machinery. “Richard had provided an atmosphere in which his talented students could thrive. They were extremely bright, enthusiastic, and all involved in accessibility research. I spent the day talking with his students and learning about their innovative work.”

Ladner has participated in, or organized, numerous computer science workshops for high school students with disabilities. Currently, he and his colleagues are developing accessible curricula and training teachers to help more students with disabilities participate in AP Computer Science Principles courses. Their curricula train teachers of blind and visually impaired students, teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students, and teachers of learning-disabled students.

In accepting congratulations for the reward, Ladner wrote to his peers, “I am very pleased and honored to receive this Public Service Award from the National Science Board. I’m very fortunate to be in a school where we support each other in our research, teaching, and service, including public service.”

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This article includes excerpts from the NSB press release and the Allen School announcement.

Forbes’ Mindset Matters highlights CREATE as the innovation industry needs

Jonathan Kaufman, in Forbes magazine’s Mindset Matters column, calls for innovation to make workplaces inclusive and accessible. In his May 31, 2020 column, An Object Lesson For Business, And Innovation In The Age Of A Pandemic, he highlights the partnership between CREATE and Microsoft as a prime example of how we can “redefine the very nature of work and develop the tools needed to create a culture of innovation.”

“It is at this moment that offers organizational leadership a means to reframe the status that disability plays in how we redefine the very nature of work and develop the tools needed to create a culture of innovation and cultivate a management strategy that embraces the needs of individual employees to be more productive and in turn give back to the collective goals of the company.”

Jonathan Kaufman, Forbes magazine

    Q&A with Jacob Wobbrock on UW’S new accessible technology research center

    iSchool news, University of Washington | May 28, 2020

    Jacob O. Wobbrock, CREATE Co-Director and a professor in the UW Information School, has become one of the world’s foremost experts on accessible computing and human-computer interaction. His approach is to create interactive systems that can capitalize on the situated abilities of users, whatever they are, rather than make users contort themselves to become amenable to the ability-assumptions of rigid technologies. He calls this perspective Ability-Based Design.

    In the iSchool article, Wobbrock answers questions about what CREATE will mean for his research, starting with ‘why do we need CREATE?’ and a very compelling answer: “We’re getting older and living longer. If we live long enough, we will all have disabilities. So the need for technology to be accessible, and for technology-mediated services to be accessible, is clearer than ever.”

    Read the full iSchool article.

    New UW center bankrolled by Microsoft aims to make technology more accessible to disabled people

    The Seattle Times | May 28, 2020

    University of Washington professor Jacob Wobbrock figures the best way to make technology more accessible to disabled people is to anticipate their needs from the very beginning. “The world we live in is built on certain assumptions,’’ Wobbrock said. “If we question those assumptions right from the start when we design things, then suddenly things are accessible.’’

    The Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experience (CREATE) is launching with a nine-member, interdisciplinary faculty led by Wobbrock and co-director Jennifer Mankoff. 

    Read full Seattle Times article.

    UW launches new Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences with $2.5 million investment from Microsoft

    UW News | May 28, 2020

    The University of Washington today announced the establishment of the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE). Fueled by a $2.5 million inaugural investment from Microsoft, UW CREATE is led by an interdisciplinary team whose mission is to make technology accessible and to make the world accessible through technology.

    The center will build upon current projects in prioritizing and automating personalization, transitioning transportation to be accessible; augmenting abilities through wearable technologies; developing inclusive, intelligent systems and data sets; and “do-it-yourself” accessible technology production.

    The partnership between UW and Microsoft has opened student internship and career opportunities, as well as ongoing research engagements with the Ability Team at Microsoft Research. Current projects include developing audio-first representations of websites for smart speakers; understanding how perceptions of software developer job candidates with autism may impact hiring decisions; AI-based sign language recognition and translation as well as ongoing work on an ASL to English dictionary; and data-driven mental health apps.

    Read the full UW News article.

    UW DO-IT Program CoMotion Makers Space. Credit: Karen Orders Photography

    $2.5 million inaugural investment from Microsoft launches CREATE

    CREATE News | May 28, 2020
    UW president Ana Mari Cauce, with Brad Smith, Tim Shriver and Jennifer Mankoff, announced the new center and Microsoft’s investment at the Microsoft Ability Summit on May 28.

    With a mission to make technology accessible and to make the world accessible through technology, Microsoft’s support will build upon current projects in accessible transportation, augmenting abilities, inclusive design, and “do-it-yourself” technology.

    The company’s endorsement of the UW’s accessibility work promises to catalyze additional investment, which, ultimately, could generate the full funding needed to provide long-term support for the Center. 

    Learn more:

    An app for everything, but can everyone use it?

    Medium | May 26, 2020

    For most of us, the day seems to revolve around our phones: check email, read the news, pay bills, and get directions to the store. Mobile apps are essential in day-to-day life.

    Unfortunately, many apps fail to be fully accessible to people with disabilities or those who rely on assistive technologies. As one blind app user noted, using an inaccessible app is “a constant feeling of being devalued. It doesn’t matter about the stupid button that I can’t press in that moment. It’s that it keeps happening. … And the message that I keep receiving is that the world just doesn’t value me.”

    Anne Spencer Ross is a UW Ph.D. candidate in computer science, working on accessibility.  She wrote about the state of app accessibility and shared ways that app users and developers can help make apps work for everyone. 

    Read more of Ross’ article

    UW Disability Studies, D Center win UW Medicine CLIME Grant

    UW faculty and staff affiliated with CREATE, UW Disability Studies and the UW D Center have received a grant from the Center for Leadership and Innovation in Medical Education (CLIME) to explore what it means to be an ally to people with disabilities. “This is an integral issue informing professional education in the medical fields as well as in design and engineering, says PI Heather Feldner. “I am most excited that this project has the potential to further the conversation about how an inclusive mindset can shape contemporary health professions education and practice. Accessibility and technology will be a big part of these conversations and the subsequent training material development. To be able to approach this project with the multidisciplinary perspectives of the CREATE team as a resource is a huge asset.”

    Four CREATE faculty receive Google Research Awards

    UW News | March 16, 2020

    Four UW CREATE faculty have been named recipients of Google Faculty Research Awards. The grants, among 150 Google recently announced, support world-class technical research in computer science, engineering and related fields. Each award provides funding to support one graduate student for a year.

    The recipients are Jennifer Mankoff, James Fogarty and Jon Froelich of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and Leah Findlater of the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering.

    The goal of the awards is “to identify and strengthen long-term collaborative relationships with faculty working on problems that will impact how future generations use technology,” according to Google.

    ASSETS Paper Impact Award

    Jacob Wobbrock honored for improving touch-screen accessibility

    Congratulations to Jacob O. Wobbrock, a founding co-director of CREATE, for his work with Shaun Kane, PhD ’11 and Jeffrey Bigham, PhD ’09 improving the accessibility of mobile technology.

    The team received the 2019 SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award for their 2008 paper, “Slide Rule: Making mobile touch screens accessible to blind people using multi-touch techniques.” The award is given biennially by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing and recognizes a paper published at least a decade earlier that made a significant innovation that has been influential in the field.

    Slide Rule addressed the challenge of navigating within a screen when mobile phones transitioned from physical buttons to touch screens. Their methods represented the first screen reader for touch screens, using simple gestures for navigation and tapping targets. These features have since become mainstream in commercial products.

    Given the prevalence of touch screens in our society, the need to make them accessible to all people is still great, and we will continue to pursue that goal, along with the many other projects we are doing.

    Jacob O. Wobbrock

    As technology continues to advance, Wobbrock’s team continues to identify innovative methods for interaction that improve accessibility. Read more about the award and his recent research.

    Designing for the fullness of human experience

    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

    View the full interview on the King 5 website.

    With AI and other tech, Anat Caspi focuses on helping people with disabilities

    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. 

    Read the full Seattle Times Business & Technology article.

    With AI and other tech, Anat Caspi focuses on helping people with disabilities

    The Seattle Times | August 4, 2019

    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.

    Read full Seattle Times article.

    UW students join Teach Access Study Away program

    Five University of Washington students, joining a group of 25 students from 7 different universities, traveled to Silicon Valley in May 2019 to participate in the Teach Access program Study Away Silicon Valley (SASV). Professor Ladner served as one of six faculty mentors for the small group projects that participating students completed during the five days of SASV. The students visited the accessibility teams at Walmart, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Verizon Media Group (Yahoo!), and Facebook, where they learned how each of these companies are making their products and services more accessible and usable. One of the UW students will join Microsoft as a software engineer at the end of the 2019-20 academic year and another two will join Microsoft as 2020 summer interns. 

    Read more