1. Brianna Blaser
  2. AccessCS10K
  3. http://uw.edu/accesscomputing/accesscs10k
  4. University of Washington
  1. Richard Ladner
  2. http://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/ladner
  3. Professor
  4. AccessCS10K
  5. http://uw.edu/accesscomputing/accesscs10k
  6. University of Washington
  1. Andreas Stefik
  2. AccessCS10K
  3. http://uw.edu/accesscomputing/accesscs10k
  4. University of Nevada Las Vegas
Public Discussion

Continue the discussion of this presentation on the Multiplex. Go to Multiplex

  • Icon for: Richard Ladner

    Richard Ladner

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 16, 2016 | 10:41 a.m.

    Welcome to the discussion about Quality Education is Accessible. Brianna Blaser, Andreas Stefik, and I, Richard Ladner will be monitoring the discussion and can hopefully answer your questions or read your comments.

  • Icon for: Joni Falk

    Joni Falk

    Co-Director of CSR at TERC
    May 16, 2016 | 10:52 a.m.

    Richard this is a fabulous video. Thanks for submitting it. Have you made inroads to make all building, and all classroom at UW accessible? What are the biggest challenges? Do you offer in-service courses to administrators from other universities?

  • Icon for: Brianna Blaser

    Brianna Blaser

    Lead Presenter
    May 16, 2016 | 01:39 p.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: Brianna Blaser

    Brianna Blaser

    Lead Presenter
    May 16, 2016 | 01:40 p.m.

    You can find more resources related to AccessCS10K and accessibility of K-12 computing education at our website uw.edu/accesscomputing/accesscs10k.

    I’m hoping to hear from other folks – what do you do to try and ensure that education is accessible to students with disabilities?

  • Icon for: Jorge Solis

    Jorge Solis

    Facilitator
    Assistant professor
    May 16, 2016 | 04:19 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing your project and the words of the students here! So much of this work is changing traditional ways of teaching and learning. I was wondering what would be some long-term goals for instituting quality and accessible education nationally and K-12?

  • Icon for: Brianna Blaser

    Brianna Blaser

    Lead Presenter
    May 16, 2016 | 05:09 p.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: Jorge Solis

    Jorge Solis

    Facilitator
    Assistant professor
    May 17, 2016 | 01:49 p.m.

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

  • Icon for: Brianna Blaser

    Brianna Blaser

    Lead Presenter
    May 17, 2016 | 03:47 p.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: Joni Falk

    Joni Falk

    Co-Director of CSR at TERC
    May 17, 2016 | 03:55 p.m.

    Yay, thanks for the acknowledgement :)

  • Icon for: Michel DeGraff

    Michel DeGraff

    Facilitator
    Professor
    May 16, 2016 | 11:15 p.m.

    This is a moving video. Indeed, quality education should be accessible to everyone. It’s a sad state of affairs that in many countries, in addition to the sort of access that is denied to the Deaf, the Blind, etc., there’s also denial of access through the use of a (former) colonial language that most of the population does not speak. This is the case of my native Haiti, for example, which has made me extra sensitive to this access issue.

    Congratulations on this great work!

  • Icon for: Brianna Blaser

    Brianna Blaser

    Lead Presenter
    May 17, 2016 | 12:05 p.m.

    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...

  • Icon for: Michel DeGraff

    Michel DeGraff

    Facilitator
    Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 04:06 p.m.

    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

  • Icon for: Marcelo Worsley

    Marcelo Worsley

    Facilitator
    Assistant Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 12:06 a.m.

    This video highlights many of the shortcomings that exist within computing and IT education. I had a chance to look through the Access CS10K website, and found the work that you all are doing with Quorum to be fantastic. Is there any thing else on the horizon for enabling “multimodal” programming, or tools that make it easier to do “multimodal” programming.

  • Icon for: Richard Ladner

    Richard Ladner

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 10:06 a.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: Michel DeGraff

    Michel DeGraff

    Facilitator
    Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 02:03 p.m.

    As I watch and re-watch your moving video, I cannot help think that your argument ((“quality of education” => “access”) could also be framed as a matter of human rights, going beyond education per se. This human-rights dimension is one that I’ve been thinking a lot about in the context of my native Haiti (with one of the most exclusive education system because of the language barrier there). Have you thought of similar “human rights” issues as you develop and implement your own approach and as you look for supporters near and far? Here I am looking for inspiration for my own work as well. Thank you!

  • Icon for: Brianna Blaser

    Brianna Blaser

    Lead Presenter
    May 17, 2016 | 03:57 p.m.

    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.

  • Sheryl Burgstahler

    Guest
    May 19, 2016 | 03:43 p.m.

    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....

  • Icon for: Michel DeGraff

    Michel DeGraff

    Facilitator
    Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 04:07 p.m.

    Excellent! Can you say a bit more about these partnerships? Are you writing about these issues of access across modalities and across hierarchies of exclusion?

  • Icon for: Brianna Blaser

    Brianna Blaser

    Lead Presenter
    May 17, 2016 | 05:32 p.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: Michel DeGraff

    Michel DeGraff

    Facilitator
    Professor
    May 18, 2016 | 07:00 p.m.

    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?

  • Icon for: Brianna Blaser

    Brianna Blaser

    Lead Presenter
    May 18, 2016 | 07:02 p.m.

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

  • Icon for: Richard Ladner

    Richard Ladner

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 19, 2016 | 01:16 p.m.

    For Michel DeGraph. Microsoft is adding features to Onenote to support readers with dyslexia. Things like separating words into their phonological units and marking subclauses have been shown to help readers. See story: http://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/top-dyslexia-a...

  • Icon for: Michel DeGraff

    Michel DeGraff

    Facilitator
    Professor
    May 19, 2016 | 09:03 p.m.

    Thank you Richard! That’s very helpful.

  • Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.