Accessible Technology and Education

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Accessible Technology and Education

• Robert Cohen
• Valerie Haven
• University of Massachusetts Boston

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Part 2

• Topics
• Teaching accessibility in introductory
  programming courses
• Work with Alex Fairley, Gustavo Lima, and David
  Gerry
• Improving accessibility for students with visual
  impairments
• Work with Arthur Meacham, Joelle Skaff, Emily
  Higgins, Jessica Lanzoni, and Michael Wissell
• Thanks
• East Alliance - http//www.eastalliance.org
• BATEC - http//www.batec.org

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Teaching Accessibility in Introductory
Programming Courses

• Goal
• Bring awareness of accessibility to Java
  programming students
• Method
• Java based projects that incorporate
  accessibility
• Results
• Simple accessibility unit for programming course
• Several interesting Java projects

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Motivation

• Initial factors
• Programming student who is blind
• Effective interaction with emacs
• Moving to Eclipse
• East Alliance SURF Scholarships
• Supporting undergraduate research in
  accessibility in STEM
• Major motivation
• Accessibility is important
• Easy to add (technically) to a programming course
  that uses Java and Swing

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Accessibility

• Making technology available to all users
• Regardless of disability
• Required by law
• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
• Section 508
• The right thing to do
• Many assistive technologies exist
• special keyboards, intelligent mice, typing aids,
  text-to-speech software, speech recognition
  software, easy-touch screens, etc.
• Useful for all users
• In different modalities

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Assistive Technology for the Visually Impaired

• Screen readers important
• Convert text to speech
• Helps make applications accessible
• Application design is crucial
• Technologies
• JAWS common (but expensive)
• Gnome Accessibility Project (Gnopernicus)
• Java Accessibility
• Screen reader connections
• Accessible name, description and tool tips
• Keyboard shortcuts - mnemonics

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Accessible Software (Trace Center)

• Type 1
• designed with accessible features built in
• Type 2
• compatible with current assistive technology
• Type 3
• neither directly accessible, nor readily
  compatible with existing assistive technology

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Teaching Accessibility in CS1

• The goal is to make students aware of the issues
• not much more Java programming courses are
  already packed full of material
• Gives a context to discuss a social issues
• The technical distance is small
• Type 1 Projects require learning about sound
• Beyond the scope of the course
• Type 2 projects require little more than the
  Swing we (may) already teach
• For example, there is a section on Tool Tips and
  Mnemonics in Lewis Loftus 4th Edition

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Design Guidelines

• We can introduce some design rules
• Provide Accessible Names for all Components.
• Provide Accessible Descriptions for components
  that need to have one.
• Provide keyboard navigation and focus for all
  components that a sighted person would want to
  see or interact with.
• Provide Mnemonics for keyboard control.
• Customized components should support
  accessibility.
• Should not be a major focus of a course
• Could be part of a term project

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Sample Projects

• Examples
• Number Format Converter
• converts numbers from one radix format to another
  
• Accessible Calculator
• Write accessibility into a custom component (a
  keypad)
• Audio Visualizer
• Illustrates the use of both graphical and audio
  display elements

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Demo
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Improving Accessibility for Students with Visual
Impairments

• Current tools to assist users who are visually
  impaired read text
• Good for textual information
• Poor for diagrams
• We focus on relational diagrams
• Diagrams where underlying representation are
  graphs

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Subway Maps
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UML Diagrams
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Organization Charts
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Molecular Diagrams
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Pert Charts
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Visual Maps
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Network Map
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PLUMB(exPLoring graphs at UMB)

• Use auditory cues to help visually impaired users
  explore graphs
• Active exploration
• Implemented on a tablet PC using C
• Uses the pen and a modified mouse

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Goals

• Assist visually impaired users to understand
  relational data represented as graphs.
• Active exploration the user should be able to
  navigate and explore the graph based on user
  interface gestures
• Usable by both blind and sighted users
• Implemented on widely available hardware and
  software

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Tablet PC Advantages

• Conducive for active exploration
• Blind users can jump to remembered locations
• Compact in size
• Widely available
• Good built-in multimedia capabilities
• Usable with little or no hardware modifications

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Future Work

• Allow students with visual impairments to create
  diagrams
• Accessible whiteboards
• Universal collaborative visual mapping tools

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Demo