Narrator: Technology jobs are in demand
and an understanding of computing and coding
are important for anyone pursuing these opportunities.
But learning programming languages can be difficult for any new student
including some students with disabilities.
That’s why Quorum was created.
Andreas Stefik: My name is Andreas Stefik.
I'm an assistant professor of computer science
at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
I invented the Quorum programming language.
It was originally designed to try to help
blind or visually impaired students learn to program more easily.
At the time a lot of computer science was moving toward very visual content
and that in general makes a lot of sense,
however, not if you're blind.
Richard Ladner: I'm Richard Ladner,
professor in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.
Children who are blind who can't see can actually program in Quorum.
If you look at almost all the tools that are out there for children,
they're all super visual and this one is visual and auditory
so that makes it much better for everybody.
Narrator: Quorum’s features are universally designed,
making it an easier language to learn in general.
Andreas: The language is simpler which impacts people with learning disabilities.
For example, if I was to tell the computer to do something over and over again
in a language like Java I would say "for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {"
which obviously means that we should do something 10 times.
In Quorum, I say "repeat 10 times."
Richard: I find personally reading Quorum programs
a lot easier than reading C programs or Java programs.
Most languages after every single line
you have to put a semicolon.
Why you have to put a semicolon, it seems to be just tradition.
It doesn't need to be there and Quorum has no semicolons.
Narrator: Quorum is evidence-based, using the results of scientific experiments
to determine how to make the language easier to use.
Andreas: Quorum provides two primary benefits.
One is everything is free, and then number two,
at the end of the day all of the materials that we use
and that we give to people are vetted both by teachers and students
and are vetted in experiments through the scientific method.