World Health Organization, it makes sense to keep this population in mind when innovating or studying any novel interaction technologies. Better yet: Bring qualified people with disabilities onto research teams to participate in the research.

Worldwide, there is a variety of accessibility research projects in progress. Results from these projects show up in mainstream HCI conferences such as CHI, UIST, Graphics Interface, Ubicomp, and ISWC, as well as in research conferences focusing on technology for people with disabilities, such as ASSETS, ICCHP, and W4A. To give an example, at the ASSETS 2014 Poster/ Demo session, I saw a demonstration of the TPad Tablet, a flat touchscreen that provides haptic feedback by using ultrasonic friction-reduction to change the resistance force on the finger as it slides around the screen [ 9]. The TPad Tablet research team has reached out to blind researchers outside the team to help them evaluate the development of potential applications of the technology.

It is fortunate that the TPad Tablet project was able to find a qualified blind researcher to help with their project, since there are so very few. This leads me to the conclusion that it would significantly enrich research in HCI and improve the accessibility of mainstream products if there were more students with disabilities entering the HCI field.

Furthermore, it would help the field if more emphasis was put on accessibility-and disability-related topics in HCI textbooks and courses. A great example of a course that emphasizes accessibility is MI T’s course 6.811: Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology, which was initiated by professors Seth Teller and Rob Miller. In this course, students work in small teams with a person with a disability to develop some piece of technology that would be useful to that person. The course includes guest lectures from practitioners and those who have disabilities.

Industry, in some cases, has taken
the lead in accessible design by
integrating accessibility into their
products. One example is Microsoft’s
Mouse Keys for Windows, which
allows someone with a mobility-related
disability to execute mouse actions
using only the numeric keyboard.

Another, mentioned earlier, is Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader for iOS and Mac, which allows someone who is blind or has low vision to interact with the operating system using speech output instead of visual output. In both cases, these technologies are examples of universal and ability-based design. They are built in as options, rather than being add-ons. Unfortunately, I have seen far too many websites and apps that are not accessible when they could be.

A website could be made accessible if the designers applied the WCAG Web accessibility guidelines [ 10]. An iPhone app could be made accessible if the designers applied the principles defined in the iOS accessibility guidelines [ 11]. At a minimum, design teams in industry should employ people with disabilities in product testing. Better yet, they should hire qualified designers and developers with disabilities to reap the full benefits of design for user empowerment.

CONCLUSION

Here I have introduced the concept of design for user empowerment, which I consider to be the strongest form of human-centered design.

I demonstrated by example the power of technology to improve the lives of people with disabilities and explained why people with disabilities should be involved in the creation of that technology as designers and developers. I encouraged universal design and ability-based design, which allow for people with a wide variety of abilities to interact with technology, avoiding add-on assistive technologies to make technology accessible.

My National Science Foundation-funded alliance, AccessComputing, just beginning its 10th year, is one way I am helping to realize design for user empowerment. The primary goal of AccessComputing is to increase the number and success of students with disabilities in computing fields. For more information about AccessComputing please visit http://www.washington.edu/ accesscomputing/.

There you can read more about Ms.

Torcolini and Ms. Krishnaswamy on the Choose Computing link.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AccessComputing is supported by National Science Foundation Grant Number CNS-1042260. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Endnotes

1. Lang, H.G. A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell. Gallaudet University Press, 2000.

2. Bell, A.G. Researches in electric telephony. Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers 6 (1877), 385–421.

3. Kane, S.K., Bigham, J.P., and Wobbrock, J.O. Slide rule: Making mobile touch screens accessible to blind people using multi-touch interaction techniques. Proc. of the 10th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. ACM, New York, 2008, 73–80.

4. Mace, R. L., Hardie, G.J., and Place, J.P. Accessible environments: Toward universal design. In Design Intervention: Toward a More Humane Architecture. W. E. Preiser, J.C. Vischer, and E. T. White, eds. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1991.

5. Wobbrock, J.O., Kane, S.K., Gajos, K. Z., Harada, S., and Froehlich, J. Ability-based design: Concept, principles and examples. ACM Trans. on Accessible Computing 3, 3 (2011), Article 9.

6. Gould, J.D. and Lewis, C. Designing for usability: Key principles and what designers think. Communications of the ACM 28, 3 (1985), 300–311.

7. Bødker, S., Ehn, P., Sjögren, D., and Sundblad, Y. Co-operative Design— Perspectives on 20 years with the Scandinavian I T design model. Keynote presentation. Proc. of NordiCHI 2000.

8. Ladner, R.E. Access and empowerment: Commentary on “Computers and People with Disabilities.” ACM Trans. on Accessible Computing 1, 2 (2008), Article 11.

9. Jin, S., Mullenbach, J., Shultz, C., Colgate, J.E., and Piper, A.M. 2014. OS-level surface haptics for touch-screen accessibility. Proc. of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & Accessibility. ACM, New York, 315–316.

10. http:// www.w3.org/ TR/ WCAG20/

11. https://developer.apple.com/accessibility/

 

Richard E. Ladner is a professor in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. His research focuses on access technology, particularly for those who are deaf, blind, or deaf-blind. In addition to AccessComputing, he co-heads AccessCS10K, which helps make high school computing classes more accessible to students with disabilities.

DOI: 10.1145/2723869 © 2015 ACM 1072-5520/15/03 $15.00