AccessComputing News - December 2022: All Articles

We are excited that three AccessComputing Partners have recently been selected for significant awards.

The University of Maine’s VEMI Lab, led by chief research scientist Nicholas Guidice, earned third place in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Inclusive Design Challenge for its Autonomous Vehicle Assistant (AVA). The competition looked for “innovative design solutions to enable people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities to use automated vehicles to access jobs, healthcare, and other critical destinations.”

Sarah B. Lee, The University of Southern Mississippi, was awarded the (ISC)² Diversity Award, which “honors individuals who represent the core values of (ISC)² through significant contributions in driving a more diverse workforce in the cybersecurity community.” (ISC)² is a professional association for cybersecurity. Sarah is one of the cofounders of the Last Mile Fund, which provides financial support for low-income underrepresented students in computing to help them complete their degrees.

Susan Rodger, Duke University, was selected for the 2023 SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education, which honors an individual or group in recognition of a significant contribution to computer science education. The award will be presented at SIGCSE in Toronto in March 2023.

AccessComputing Co-PI Stacy Branham talking to participants at Tapia. Photo courtesy of Tapia.

Twenty-three AccessComputing team members kicked off the start of this academic year in true celebratory fashion; they received full or partial funding to attend one of two annual fall conferences celebrating diversity in computing. Early in September, 13 AccessComputing Team Members traveled to Washington DC to participate in the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference and then in mid-September, another 10 Team Members received support for virtual registrations to participate in the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, held in Orlando.

AccessComputing was well represented at the Tapia Celebration in particular, as several principal investigators (PIs) joined students at the event. Among these PIs was Dr. Stacey Branham, faculty member at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Dr. Branham was featured as plenary speaker and gave a powerful talk, sharing her story as a woman with a disability and her path to becoming a professor of informatics at UCI. Several AccessComputing team members commented on the power and impact of Dr. Branham’s speech and identified it as one of the high points of the conference. You can watch Dr. Branham’s speech on the Tapia Facebook Page.

Avi Knotts, an undergrad from Temple University, wished there had been more Black people in attendance and that more of the speakers were people of color; however, she felt that the “Black Women’s Voices, Leadership and Vision for K16 Computer Science Education” panel discussion was a highlight for her:

“That discussion brought me to tears because everything that was said was so true and really hit home. It was great to hear that the experiences I’ve faced are universal and that a solution needs to be found. It was also very nice to see that people who did not share those similar experiences were enlightened and very intrigued by the stories of the panelists.”

Naba Rizvi, a grad student from University of California, San Diego noted that she really enjoyed the various disability-related sessions, and particularly the Birds of a Feather conversations, which allowed her to meet with others who share her passion for disability inclusion. Naba also thought there was room for additional participation by speakers, attendees, and other individuals who experience psychosis:

“I wasn't able to find any talks or resources on [psychosis], which is sad because they're an underserved, underrepresented, misunderstood, and widely stigmatized community. However, I understand the underrepresentation of stigmatized mental illnesses may just be a reflection of our society/industry as a whole and not necessarily exclusive to Tapia.”

Team Members also shared some perspectives on Grace Hopper (GHC) as well. Zhuomin Li, a grad student at Washington University in St. Louis attended Tapia and GHC, even working a booth for Washington University at the latter. Zhuomin commented that GHC is larger than Tapia, and at GHC he had a chance to talk to a lot of women about grad school. Other GHC attendees commented on how empowering it was to be in a space filled with women in computing. One attendee noted that she’s experienced challenges with the interviewing process and really valued a session from a corporate interviewer, with tips on how to approach interviewing and discussion on accommodations for the interview process.

Conference attendance can be an invaluable experience for AccessComputing Team Members. Dr. Raja Kushalnagar, AccessComputing PI from Gallaudet University, noted that one of his undergraduate students considered her experience at Tapia to be a real eye-opener when it came to graduate school admissions expectations, something she may not have realized if she’d not attended. Dr. Elaine Short, AccessComputing PI from Tufts University, was delighted at the opportunity to connect with students from other campuses and even had one Boston-area student she’d met in DC visit her on the Tufts campus a couple weeks after the conference.

While both Tapia and GHC are celebrations of diversity in computing, they’re also important opportunities for AccessComputing Team Members to network, learn, and explore their career and graduate school options.

Able Player

In November 2022, Able Player 4.5 was released. Able Player is an online media player created with accessibility in mind. It’s the only media player that supports all five kinds of timed text tracks defined by the HTML specification (captions, subtitles, descriptions, chapters, and metadata). It also includes many additional features such as an interactive transcript, support for synchronized sign language in a pop-up video window, a fully accessible set of buttons and controls, and a highly customizable interface through the preferences menu.

One of the biggest changes in the new release is the improvement to Able Player’s support for audio description as a timed text track, read aloud by browsers using the Web Speech API. This feature had been added in an earlier version, but it now works more reliably across all browsers and platforms. Users can customize the voice, rate, pitch, and volume in the description preferences dialog, as well as choose whether to automatically pause the video while description is playing (i.e., “extended audio description”). Also, if users speed up or slow down the video using the “faster” or “slower” buttons, the rate of description now changes as well, and description is now paused if users pause the video or skip back or forward to a new time.

Other features in the new release include captioning for audio and new settings that give authors more control over the default state of their video. For example, authors can set the default state of “extended description” to “on” if they know that pausing during description will be desirable for their videos, such as if their videos do not offer enough quiet time for description to be voiced.

Able Player 4.5 also features two new translations of all player controls, prompts, and messages. With the new Danish and Portuguese translations, Able Player is now available in 19 languages.

Accessible University

Also in November, a new version (version 3.0) of the Accessible University (AU) demo site was announced. AU is a fictional university, and the demo site features two versions of its home page, one “before” accessibility (a page with at least 22 known accessibility problems), and one “after” accessibility (the same page, with all 22 problems fixed). These pages are complemented by a third page that describes all the problems and their solutions.

The site was created as a tool for use in web accessibility trainings and workshops, although it can also be used independently as a self-training tool. The new version includes a variety of updates to reflect recent changes in accessibility coding techniques and best practices. Features that have been updated include the navigation menu, slideshow/carousel, data table, modal dialog, and online form with error validation. Also, video has been added to both the “before” and “after” pages. The “after” page uses the new version of Able Player for delivering accessible video with captions and audio description.

AU also includes a set of “before” and “after” Word, PDF, and PowerPoint files, designed to be used in trainings on document accessibility. All documents have been updated in the new release.

The new version of AU was unveiled in a half-day pre-conference workshop at the Accessing Higher Ground conference in Colorado on November 15. Attendees included people who were already using AU in their trainings and wanted to see what’s new, as well as people who had never seen the demo site before. The latter left the session excited with ideas for how they would utilize this tool on their own campuses. Attendees also provided excellent ideas for additional problems and solutions that could be added to the site, so we’re already eager to get started working on the next version.

Writing for the forthcoming book, Teaching Accessible Computing, is underway. The editorial team, including Amy J. Ko, Richard Ladner, and doctoral student Alannah Oleson have structured the writing in three phases during the 2022-23 academic year. The first phase includes chapters on accessibility foundations, graphics, web development, computer vision, and software engineering, and will include a period of feedback. Phase 2 kicks off in January, and will include chapters on accessible teaching, introductory CS courses, data structures, and several other elective topics. The third and final phase will be next summer and end with typesetting and publishing. Overall, the book will have nearly 20 chapters by more than 20 authors from across academia and industry. We’re very excited to share the work after this year!

If you’re interested in contributing a chapter, or just participating in reviewing chapters prior to publishing the first edition, let us know in our online form.

In October 2022, Zoom announced a new dedicated channel for sign language interpreters. The new feature allows one or more participants in a Zoom meeting to be assigned a role of “Interpreter” by the host, and assigned a specific language, such as “American Sign Language.”

Once interpreters are assigned, all meeting participants are notified that sign language interpretation is available, and an “Interpretation” button is added to the control bar at the bottom of the Zoom screen. If participants click this button, they’re presented with a choice of available languages. After selecting their preferred language, an interpreter window appears. It’s separate from the main Zoom window, so it can be resized and repositioned independently of the Zoom interface. If there are multiple interpreters for a given language, they share the same interpreter window but only one interpreter is shown at a time. They can hand-off to each other by toggling their video on and off.

This new feature offers an alternative to interpreters being regular participants, whose videos can be moved to the forefront by “pinning” (by individual users to customize their own view) or “spotlighting” (by the meeting host, for all users). This original model is delicate, as participants’ windows within Zoom share space with all the other Zoom features, such as the speakers’ video windows and shared screen. The new feature eliminates all confines and allows the interpreter to be anywhere on the screen, at any size.

Documentation from Zoom about these features is available for different audiences. Meeting owners and hosts should visit Managing Sign Language Interpretation. Participants can visit Viewing Sign Language Interpretation.

AccessComputing staff has been actively testing this new feature and providing ongoing feedback to Zoom’s accessibility team. There are a few known limitations. For example, as of November 2022, the interpreter window is not captured when the meeting is recorded. This limitation is expected to be addressed for cloud recordings in an upcoming release. A second problem is that the interpreter channel only works in the main room, not in breakout rooms. Interpreters can be assigned to breakout rooms, but in the breakout room they become regular participants again, so participants who need their services will need to fall back to the old way of doing things (e.g., pinning and spotlighting), until they return to the main room. A third problem is that interpreters by default do not have the ability to unmute themselves so they can speak on behalf of a participant. The host must change a setting for each interpreter to allow them to speak, which is burdensome for the host and adds an extra layer where things can go wrong.

If you have feedback you’d like to share with Zoom about their accessibility, send it to tft@uw.edu, and we will relay your feedback to the Zoom accessibility team.

When Maryland’s 900,000 K-12 public school students hung up their backpacks in March 2020, where most remained for the next 18 months, the locus of teaching and learning shifted to Chromebooks and Zoom classrooms. The 24 school systems across Maryland state moved massive amounts of technology and Internet hotspots into students’ homes to facilitate access and ramped up their purchases of subscriptions and licenses for e-book repositories, math portals, digital science and social studies content, and more. But some of these digital tools did not meet basic accessibility standards, leaving students with visual impairments and other disabilities behind as their classmates and teachers scrambled to continue progressing in the required curriculum. When most students returned to school buildings in fall 2021, many digital tools became embedded in the curriculum, broadening the impact of inaccessibility.

The problem posed by inaccessible digital instructional tools was not created by the pandemic and school building closures, but the experiences of the past two years highlighted the issues faced by many students with disabilities and sharpened the focus of advocates and legislators in the Maryland General Assembly. In 2021, a first attempt to tackle this issue legislatively failed, but in the 2022 legislative session Senator Craig Zucker, who represents District 14 in Montgomery County, introduced SB617 The Equivalent and Nonvisual Access Accountability Act for K-12 Education, which passed in both houses in the Maryland legislature and was subsequently signed into law by Governor Larry Hogan. It went into effect July 1, 2022, with full implementation of all provisions required by October 2024.

Dr. Jonathan Lazar, AccessComputing partner, director of the Trace R&D Center, and professor in the UMD iSchool, worked closely with disability advocacy groups—including the National Federation for the Blind of Maryland (NFB of MD)—and legislators to craft the bill and testified in support of the measure. Dr. Lazar describes the new statute as both a civil rights law and a cost savings law. First, it requires that Maryland’s school systems procure only accessible digital tools for instructional purposes, ensuring that all students including students with disabilities have equivalent access to the tools provided to advance their education. Second, the law shifts the liability risk for inaccessibility from the school systems to the vendors of digital tools by including an indemnification clause. This means that companies cannot simply claim that their technology is accessible, but instead are fully accountable for these claims, including assuming responsibility for remediation if necessary as well as any liability for inaccessibility.

As Dr. Lazar explained in his testimony before the Maryland Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee: “When a county Board of Education acquires digital technology or content and later determines that it is inaccessible, it often requires extra expenses to remediate the technology, as well as a time delay in access for students with disabilities. But, the Board of Education should have never procured the technology in the first place, if the technology was not accessible. By having formal processes in place, the cost, risk, and responsibility are transferred to the vendor, rather than the county Boards of Education.”

Foundationally, the law rests on the philosophical underpinnings of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which requires that when federal government agencies develop, procure, or maintain information and communication technology (ICT), it is accessible to people with disabilities. To facilitate this requirement, Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates, or VPATs, are created by vendors. These documents are supposed to explain how ICT products such as software, hardware, electronic content, and support documentation meet 508 Standards for IT accessibility. By tying accessibility to procurement, government entities and industry share the responsibility and commitment to ensuring equal access to ICT for all users, including users with disabilities.

The new Maryland law is part of a nationwide effort to chip away at the inaccessibility too often faced by blind students and other students with disabilities; similar laws have been passed recently in New Jersey and Illinois. Longtime advocate for the blind and former president of the NFB of MB Sharon Maneki noted that these laws are part of a long-term approach to securing rights by providing a well-defined procurement process and mechanisms for accountability to give advocates and families opportunities to see what the school systems are purchasing and whether the process as outlined in the law is working. No law is perfect, but legislation, said Maneki, as she reflected on this victory, “is the art of the possible.” Maneki also remarked on the importance of having allies like Dr. Lazar become involved in the process: “Jonathan is a big asset as an expert in accessibility who can help us look at and shape the language of the law.”

Implementation of the new Maryland law faces some challenges. Currently, knowledge of the requirements within the 24 state school systems may be limited, and to be successful districts will need to ramp up accessibility expertise within the procurement process for the interpretation of VPAT documents. Transparency is a critical component of the law; beginning in October 2023 each local school system will be required to report on the accessibility of their digital tools. These reports will be compiled and made public as well as reported to the governor and the General Assembly.

While this law represents a significant step forward for digital accessibility within Maryland’s K-12 schools, there is always room for growth. The newly passed law does not ensure that teachers and staff with disabilities encounter only accessible technology in their work; administrative systems purchased by school districts do not have to meet this requirement. Further, even for instructional digital tools, the law allows districts to purchase inaccessible tools if the tool has “pedagogical value” and there is no equivalent accessible tool. Advocates hope, however, that as the provisions are integrated into the procurement process, vendors will recognize that accessibility makes their products more competitive, as well as being the right thing to do to ensure access for all students.

Changing procurement practices is one goal, but the larger mission is educating the wider community so that elected officials, administrators, teachers, and technology vendors all view digital accessibility as a civil rights issue for students with disabilities.

Hi, my name is Kartik. I work on the accessibility innovation team at Microsoft at the intersection of engineering and product, co-founded I-Stem to enhance access to content for people with disabilities, and support technology at Our Ability to help people with disabilities find meaningful jobs. I am passionate about accessibility innovation and new experiences that will make it more delightful for people with disabilities. I have had several experiences over the years that have shaped my passion and now full-time work. 

It all started when I was born in India. My parents were puzzled. The doctor told them that their son wouldn’t ever be able to see, and community members advised them on how they should be ready and willing to support me throughout my life. Many said education was not important and that careers like music were the only way to go. However, my parents had different ideas. They wanted to make sure that I could get the same education as my sighted siblings. I enrolled at a special school for the blind where I picked up basic skills such as traveling independently, learning braille, and using a computer with a screen reader. The last was a game changer for me. Here was something that I could use on an equal basis as my siblings, and I could access the vast expanse of information that was available to everyone else. This also meant that I could access the same educational content for the most part as my peers, and that teachers could grade my work at the same time. The school was also very progressive in that they thought that students with disabilities should study with students without disabilities and that any special resources or support should be provided. This understanding and realization that I should live my life as anyone else, aspire to achieve the same goals as everyone else, and get involved in all recreational activities as everyone else was very powerful.

Now, it wasn't all good. It was challenging to adapt to the new environment especially coming from a special school for the blind. Teachers did not know how to help a blind student, and I of course was clueless as a seven-year-old. But, there was this belief and resolve that we will figure it out; we will make it work. And this is what mattered. My mom figured out a clever way to engage me in art or painting classes, which was completely visual otherwise by pasting a thread or wool on the outline of the image so that I could not only understand the geometric shapes but also enjoy coloring the image. In the meanwhile, I started developing a lot of interest in technology, and by the time I was in high school, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to become a software engineer. But to do so, I had to pursue math and science in 11th grade. However, at that time, the central board of secondary education did not allow blind students to pursue STEM. I was very upset, didn't know what to do. My closest friends, teachers, and mentors all advised me to explore other opportunities and academic tracks, but I wanted to pursue sciences. After a lot of thinking, I decided to challenge the status quo. After a lot of effort, in November 2010, the board updated their rules to allow all blind students across the country to pursue math and science in high school. I thought that I had won the battle, but little did I know that it was only getting started.

I was in the 11th grade, frustrated at the inaccessibility of resources to learn math and science. There were no books that I could read with my screen reader, there were no diagrams in accessible formats that I could understand independently, and above all, there was no support or mentors. But then something happened that tested my patience. My teacher drew a graph on the board and of course I couldn't understand it. that was it. I knew I couldn't take this anymore and decided to give up science. But then, I thought back to all of the work that I did to enroll in science in the first place, and I knew I couldn't give up so easily. I went back to music, my hobby, and learned about sonification. This was encouraging, and I knew that I could successfully complete high school science education by leveraging technology and innovating. My teachers also realized by then that I'm not going to give up, so they finally decided to join forces with a shared determination to make it happen. And indeed it did, I not only completed science, but excelled at it. Technology was a great enabler.

Later, I applied to universities abroad and was fortunate to be accepted to Stanford, where I completed my bachelor's and master's in computer science. Stanford was very different. I had access to all the support, all the resources, and everything was great. Opportunities were immense, and classmates and professors excellent. But there was something missing, something big. I hadn't changed the situation back home. My juniors who wanted to study engineering in India couldn't. That is when I launched the project STEM Access that not only worked with the leading engineering institutes in the country to have them change their rules and become more acceptable to the blind, but also provided mentorship and support to students with disabilities. The program has since expanded and is now an edtech organization that is focused on enhancing content accessibility for people with print disabilities, particularly STEM and technical content. 

At the same time, I wanted to develop my own skills as a software and AI engineer. Thanks to AccessComputing, I was able to get feedback on my resume, attend conferences, network with other community members and learn about the latest in accessibility. I interned at IBM Research, Microsoft and Uber, and took up a full-time offer to work for Microsoft after school. I joined as a software engineer on Cortana team , transitioned into AI, and finally got an opportunity to work on the accessibility innovation team. As part of this team, I help with the AI for Accessibility program, a public grant program from Microsoft that helps promote accessibility innovation. I also work closely with Microsoft Research and product teams to explore new opportunities and experiences that can leverage the latest in AI. While doing this, equal educational and employment opportunities for people with disabilities continue to be a big focus for me, and so this summer, I also joined Our Ability Inc. to contribute to innovative ways in which we can help solve the employment gap that exists in our community.

I am excited about the role that technology can play in realizing more productive and seamless experiences for everyone including people with disabilities and look forward to contribute to this field.