Accessibility:

A Guide to Building Future User Interfaces

Welcome everyone to “Accessibility:  A Guide to Building Future User Interfaces”!

The premise of this course is that the access technology developed for people with disabilities is not only interesting in and of itself, but often provides a very practical look at what user interface technology will become in the future. As such, we will be introducing a number of future technologies, not only by discussing what they might be, but also by discussing how they are already used by people with disabilities. Please see the syllabus for more information.

All lecture materials are available in the slides directory organized by lecture number.

Schedule

(schedule is subject to change as I rearrange to be able to bring in great external speakers)

Week 1:  Introduction

Overview of the technical contributions motivated by enabling accessibility, and an introduction to the class.

Please start Project 1, due to be presented in class 9/7.

If you are new to “web programming,” or Javascript, please take some time this week to start skilling up on Code Academy.

Week 2:  The Web

Learn about “The Web,” how access technologies interact with the Web, and how to make accessible web pages.

Google Video on Practical Web Accessibility -- this video provides a great overview of the Web and how to make web content accessible. Highly recommended as a supplement to what we will cover in class.

WebAim.org -- WebAIM has long been a leader in providing information and tutorials on making the Web accessible. A great source where you can read about accessibility issues, making content accessible, etc.

Project 2:  Make An Accessible Web Page  (due for in-class grading on 9/14)

Week 3:  Text to Speech

Learn about Speech Synthesis (aka, Text to Speech).

Topics

• Producing Electronic Speech  
• Synchronization

Project 3:  Make a Self-Voicing Web Pages

Week 4:  Screen Readers

Week 5:  Screen Readers (part 2)

Topics:

• Building screen reader (NVDA, … )
• Building accessible app (work with screen reader)

Project 4:  Make a Simple Screen Reader for the Web

Week 6:  Computer Vision

Topics:

• From pixels to semantics
• Magnification

Project:  A Content-Aware Magnifier for the Web

Week 7:  Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Topics:

• Devices
• Prediction
• Context
• Challenges of Dynamic User Interfaces

Project:  Build a Context-Aware Predictive Keyboard

Week 8:  Input

Topics:

• Input devices
• Characterizing the performance of input devices
• Digital techniques for adapting to user input capabilities
• Voice control
• Eye Gaze.
• Text entry

Project:  Build a Gesture Recognizer

Week 9:  Mobile

Topics:

• Preferred Interfaces Anywhere
• Perkinput

Project:  Braille Input on Mobile Devices

Week 10:  Tactile Displays

Topics:

• Braille displays
• Alternative tactile displays
• Vibration
• Haptic Feedback

Project:  Morse Code Translator

Week 11:  Computer Vision

Topics:

• Optical Character Recognition
• Image description
• Audio Description for Video

Project:  Build an Optical Character Recognizer

Week 12:  Language and Cognitive Disabilities

Topics:

• Summarization
• Reading tools
• Dyslexia

Project:  Build a Tool to Support Web-Based Reading