The August issue of the Digest brings an update on research that makes sense of Homer Simpson and other automated GIFs for visually impaired users and a punny report on a recent CREATE-funded hackathon. We are pleased to announce our sponsorship of a student-led UW group that seeks to improve the availability of accessibility technology and share a little bit about our amazing faculty, students and postdocs. Thanks for reading!
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RESEARCH NEWS
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Ga11y improves accessibility of automated GIFs for visually impaired users
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Animated GIFs, prevalent in social media, texting platforms and websites, often lack adequate alt-text descriptions, resulting in inaccessible GIFs for blind or low-vision (BLV) users and the loss of meaning, context, and nuance in what they read. In an article published in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22), a research team led by CREATE Co-director Jacob O. Wobbrock has demonstrated a system called Ga11y (pronounced “galley”) for creating GIF annotations and improving the accessibility of animated GIFs.
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CREATE becomes a principal sponsor of HuskyADAPT
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CREATE is pleased to be a financial and advisory sponsor of HuskyADAPT, an interdisciplinary community open to all to join, that is dedicated to improving the availability of accessible technology in Washington and fostering conversations about the importance of accessible design.
HuskyADAPT is led by a team of UW students and six faculty advisors, including CREATE directors Kat Steele, Heather Feldner, Anat Caspi and Jennifer Mankoff. Their three primary focus areas are annual design projects, K-12 outreach and toy adaptation workshops, where volunteers learn how to modify off-the-shelf toys to make them switch accessible. The team also collaborates closely with Go Baby Go!
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Heather Feldner to speak at New Investigator Lecture
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Heather Feldner has been selected to present at the New Investigator Lecture for the 2022 - 2023 Science in Medicine lecture series. The CREATE associate director will be one of three junior faculty members to present in this lecture category. The New Investigator lecture series recognizes the cutting-edge work and honors select, promising new faculty members for their outstanding research.
The one-hour lecture will be in October on Zoom and will be on the CREATE calendar when details are announced.
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Recap: CREATE's second annual Community Day
On June 8, CREATE hosted over 100 registered participants and presenters at our second annual Community Day — welcome progress from last year's fully virtual event. Panel discussions addressed the disproportionate impact of access to assistive technology on children with disabilities in BIPOC and immigrant communities as well as issues with the intersection of accessibility and biometric technologies.
At the accompanying Research Showcase, 14 teams presented projects that included disability justice in urban planning, ride-on cars for early childhood mobility impairments, and 3D printing of assistive technologies.
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Recap: Inclusive and accessible textiles hackfest
"It was a stitch for all participants!" quipped Jennifer Mankoff in her recap of the CREATE-sponsored inclusive and accessible textiles hackfest. Mankoff, an organizer and mentor at the event, kept quipping, "After four in-person days of hard work and a weekend spent hacking, participants generated lots of great material to present to the judges, who were totally hooked by the final presentations!" Congratulations to Ellie Seehorn, who led the Grand Prize winning project Tapest{o}ry, an embroidered tactile cloth picture book with audio output for nonvisual exploration, and to the other innovative project teams:
- Textile Switches (Honorable Mention)
- Knitted Object Modifications
- Bump Dress: Body Accommodating Knit (Honorable Mention)
- Pockets anywhere!
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After a "sewccess" like this, we hope to see folks again next year to CREATE more inclusive and accessible solutions. Topic to be announced!
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Student User Experience Design opportunity
UW Academic Services has an excellent opportunity for students, either undergrad or grad, interested in user experience design. Hone your skills, gain new expertise, and develop your portfolio while working on an intensely collaborative team using modern technology and processes to develop products with huge impact to the daily lives of the UW community. The position will be open until filled.
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Student highlight: Apple Scholar and 2019 Teach Acccess alum Venkatesh Potluri
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Lack of access to development tools for blind and visually impaired developers. A collision avoidance system that doesn't recognize a wheelchair user crossing the street. These are two scenarios that Ph.D. student Venkatesh Potluri says need a more inclusive approach. Currently working with Jennifer Mankoff in the Allen School’s Make4all Group and legally blind, Potluri has firsthand knowledge of the barriers people with disabilities face in their interactions with technology and seeks to improve nonvisual programming experiences and interaction techniques for efficient screen reader use.
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Earlier this year, Potluri was named a 2022 Apple Scholar in AI/ML for his efforts to advance a new paradigm in UI design.
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Welcome to CREATE's 3 new post docs!
We welcome Alexandra (Sasha) Portnova, Maitrayee Das, and Momona Yamagami to CREATE.
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Sasha Portnova is our first Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training (RRT) Postdoctoral Fellow. Sasha hopes to harness advancements in metamaterials and smart textiles to create custom solutions for assistance and rehabilitation. A UW alum, Sasha received her B.S. in mechanical engineering from UW and completed her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in ME at Northwestern University.
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Maitrayee Das earned her Ph.D. in computer science and communication at Northwestern. She has investigated accessibility in creative endeavors in teams of blind and sighted individuals and among neurodivergent professionals. Her work has included developing auditory techniques for enhancing accessibility in collaborative writing and an audio-enhanced loom for accessible weaving.
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Momona Yamagami's research focuses on modeling and enhancing human-machine interaction (HMI) to support accessibility and health using biosignals and control theory applied to the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical & computer engineering from the UW.
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CREATE’s mission is to make technology accessible, and to make the world accessible through technology.
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Copyright 2022, Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences, University of Washington
Contact us: create-contact@uw.edu
Any UW student or faculty researcher working on accessibility of or through technology can join UW CREATE. We "converse" through Slack (uwcreate.slack.com, visible to UW emails), share news through email messages and the CREATE website, and are active on Twitter: @uwcreate.
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