[jaunty piano tune]
Boon's Mom: Boon, he's very excited about the world.
He's up for almost anything.
Boon's Dad: He's a thinker and he likes to explore.
He's not afraid to do things.
Boon: I like computer programming. I might do some computer programming.
And I also want to be maybe an inventor, a scientist, and an author.
Boon's mom: I don't know I guess if it's so important for him to learn coding
but it's important I feel like for him to be at least introduced to coding
and then it's his decision to pursue it or not.
Richard Ladner: I'm Richard Ladner,
professor emeritus at the University of Washington.
I've been observing, you know, this movement
to bring computer science into K-12 education.
And I've noticed that a lot of the technologies
that are being introduced to young children are not accessible,
especially for young children who are blind or visually impaired.
Lauren Milne: I'm Lauren Milne.
I'm a graduate student at the University of Washington
and I'm the inventor of Blocks4All.
Traditionally, programming has been done with text-based editing
so you just type in your program which is of course very accessible
but more recently people have been creating these environments for children,
these block-based environments, that have a lot of visual elements
so they're really not accessible for a child with a visual impairment.
We decided to design Blocks4All on a touchscreen
because we found that a lot of children, especially children with visual impairments,
are already using touch screens.
The screen reader VoiceOver that comes with, for example, iPads,
is very accessible.
Richard: The outputs for the programs were typically visual.
There were animations, and those weren't accessible either.
Instead of having visual outputs we have tactile output
which is using a robot.
Boon: Drive forward. Turn left. Turn left. And then turn left again.
[Screen reader voicing instructions]
Adults in the background: Here we go, Oh!
[blocks clattering]
Lauren: Really what I'm envisioning is I see it as really a prototype
where I try out a whole bunch of techniques
and I'm hoping that other developers
who are creating these blocks-based environments
can use some of the techniques that I'm finding
and make their own environments accessible.