We have done work to increase accessibility at the UW, particularly in the area of IT. You can find more about that here: http://www.washington.edu/accessibility/ One of the biggest challenges is retroactively making something accessible after the fact, whether you’re thinking of a physical environment or IT. Because of this, we try to ensure that accessibility is taken in to concern during purchasing and design phases.

In terms of the scope of our AccessCS10K project, which is focused on K-12 computing education, long-terms goals would include accessible curricula for students with disabilities and training teachers on universal design of learning. Many of the programming tools currently used are not accessible to some students with disabilities. For example, many do not work with screen readers and cannot be controlled without a mouse.

Thank you Brianna! Could you also share some examples that augment access to learning by folks with moderate or severe hearing loss?

A major focus of some of our work on the UW campus is focused on ensuring that videos are captioned. This is a major issue for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, but also can benefit others including non-native speakers of English or folks who may be watching in an environment where they can’t turn the sound on. Because of the labor and cost involved with captioning videos, it is often easier said than done. We’re so pleased that the organizers of the Video Showcase captioned all of the videos presented here.

Yay, thanks for the acknowledgement :)

Thanks, Michel. One of our partners, Daniela Marghitu from Auburn University, is interested in CS education in Haiti. There’s more info on her website here: https://sharepoint.eng.auburn.edu/sites/CS4ALLH...

Thank you, Brianna, for the reference to Daniela Marghitu’s work. I look forward to finding out whether her work is also increasing access in Haitian education through a breach in the language barrier there. If so, her work would be so germane to the MIT-Haiti Initiative project in Haiti which was presented in this very STEM Video Hall last year: http://videohall.com/p/519

Marcelo, thanks for your question. One very interesting problem is how to make block languages like Scratch and Blockly accessible for blind children. We are beginning to address this as part of our development work. Others around the country are as well. Hopefully, a solution will appear in the next year or so.

We absolutely think about accessibility as a social justice issue. Thinking about disability issues from this perspective aligns some of our work with other work done to broaden participation in STEM. Because of this, we have been able to build partnerships with other who are interested in increasing the representation of women or racial/ethnic minorities in STEM.

Yes, our approach in all we do is from a social justice, civil rights perspective. Students with disabilities have a right to quality education in computing and other fields, so we need to ensure that these students can exercise their civil rights by fully engaging in learning activities. This may require some extra work in the planning stages of a course, but it is hard to argue that this is NOT the right thing to do. We promote that application of universal design. See our Center for Universal Design in education site at www.uw/doit/programs/center-universal-design-ed....

You can find more information about some of our partners on our website. http://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/acces... On our AccessCS10K project, we are working with partners to (1) increase the information about students with disabilities in training for K-12 computing teachers and (2) develop accessible curricula and tools for K-12 computing.

I’ve now looked at your website with the list of partners. Wow! This is absolutely impressive and inspiring well done!

One thing that I noticed on that list, which sparked my interest even further is the mention of “high school students with dyslexia.” One thing that I’ve looked into, quite superficially, is the advantages afforded to dyslexic students by languages such as Kreyòl, Spanish, Italian, etc., that have “transparent” orthographies as compared to languages such as English and French with “opaque” orthographies. I’ve also used such differences in my argument that Kreyòl in Haiti is an asset (for literacy and more), not a liability!

Are such differences (transparent vs. opaque orthographies) something that you’ve looked into in your own efforts to help increase access? Do you have any data about patterns of use of your platforms across linguistically-diverse dyslexic populations? Have you had to fine-tune your products based on the language background of your target populations?

This is an interesting idea, but isn’t something we’ve looked at yet.

Thank you Richard! That’s very helpful.