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Schedule for Accessibility Hackaton

9:00 - 9:10 – Welcome & Intro of events

  • John Tschida, Director at National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, Administration for Community Living, US Department of Health and Human Services (~5 min)

  • Jameson Dempsey, DC Legal Hackers (MC) (~3 min)

9:10 - 10:00 – Lightning Talks

For slide content, download the master deck of slides.

  • Sue Swenson, Acting Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, US Department of Education, "Who Owns the Records of Americans with Disabilities" | VIDEO

  • Gregg Vanderheiden, Ph.D., Director Trace R&D Center, Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering and Biomedical Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison, Co-Director, Raising the Floor International and the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure Project, "Using the cloud to allow everyone (not just programmers) to create solutions for people with disabilities" [Demo]

  • Erin Buhler, Ph.D. Student, Information Systems, UMBC and Aqueasha Martin, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Information Systems, UMBC, "Accessible Technology Research at UMBC" [Demo]

  • Anne Taylor, Director of Access Technology National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute

  • Christian Vogler, Director, Technology Access Program, Gallaudet University, "Video Access for the Deaf-Blind" [Demo] | VIDEO

  • Jamal Mazrui, Director, Accessibility and Innovation Initiative, Federal Communications Commission, "Hacking for Mobile Accessibility" | DEMO

  • Jinjuan Heidi Feng, Associate Professor, Computer and Information Sciences, Towson University, "SoundsRight audio CAPTCHA: Making Web authentication accessible to blind users" [Demo]

  • Steve Jacobs, President, IDEAL Group, Inc. and CEO, Apps4Android, Inc., "Using advanced knowledge discovery technology to enable individuals with print disabilities to access and acquire knowledge from websites, digital documents, research databases, blogs, and Wikis that were not necessarily developed with accessibility, usability, and/or readability in mind." | DEMO

  • Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google | VIDEO

10:00 - 10:15 – How to make websites accessible

  • Nick Bristow, Innovation Specialist at 18F

10:15 - 10:30 - (Break)

10:30 - 11:00 – Problem Statements

  • Kicked by off: Phaedra Chrousos, Chief Customer Officer & Associate Administrator, Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technology, GSA (~5 min)

11:00 - 12:00 – Brainstorming Sessions

  • Introductions - everyone introduces themselves
  • Form groups and get started.
  • Share your results!

12:00 - 1:00 – Lunch (not provided)

1:00 - 4:15 – Hacking! & Breakout sessions

Main room: Hacking session (Room 1460)

This is a general open space to address the problem statements from the morning session.

Room A: Section 508 Refresh (Room 1153)

1:00 to 3:00 pm - Access board webinar on Section 508 Refresh

Presention: Section 508 Best Practices Webinar Series

  • Bruce Bailey, Accessibility IT Specialist, U.S. Access Board
  • David Baquis, Accessibility Specialist, U.S. Access Board
  • Timothy Creagan, Senior Accessibility Specialist, U.S. Access Board
  • Deborah Kaplan, Section 508 Policy Lead, Office of the CIO, HHS

3:10 to 4:15 pm - Policy Roundtable: Accessibility Policy Discussion

  • Jim Tobias, Principal, Inclusive Technologies
  • Anne Taylor, National Federation of the Blind

Room B: Learning and demos (Room 1147)

1:00 to 2:00 pm - Accessibility: Are UXperienced? by Angela Hooker, GSA

2:10 to 4:10 pm - Demos

2:00-2:25 - Demos by Christian Vogler Director, Technology Access Program, Gallaudet University

  • Demo 1: Total Conversation: Mixing and matching media according to your needs. Description: The ability to select among and mix audio, video, and real-time text is crucial to meet the wide-ranging needs of people with disabilities in next-generation telecommunications; especially emergency communications. This demo will showcase the potential of next-generation telecommunications, building on already approved international technical standards.
  • Demo 2: Real-time text in the text messaging world Description: Turn-taking in text conversations is not always the most efficient, or accessible. The alternative is real-time text, where you can see what the other party types in real time. The demo shows seamless integration of this technology into the Google Talk environment, within familiar user interfaces.

2:30-2:55 - Demos by Gregg Vanderheiden, Ph.D. Director Trace R&D Center, Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering and Biomedical Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison, Co-Director, Raising the Floor - International and the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure Project

  • Demo1: Captions that correct themselves as you watch them - CCC provides a means for anyone in the audience or on the phone to correct errors they see in the captions. It is no longer necessary to see errors and not be able to do something about it — or to view captions that are not what the person is saying.
  • Demo2: Computers that instantly change to meet different user’s needs using the GPII - The Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) allows people to store their needs and preferences in the cloud or on a KeyToken, and use them to cause technologies to instantly change so the they are understandable and operable by them.
  • Demo3: A cognitive interface for elder access to gmail, Picasa, and chat without any digital literacy - An interface that can allow elders who can not even use an iPad interface to be able to access and use gmail, Picasa (for picture sharing) and chat on any computer they encounter - without having to deal with the computers operating system or complexity at all
  • Demo4: An open access tool set to make Tele-collaboration and teleconferencing more accessible
    • OATTS (the Open Access Tool Tray System ) provides users with a toolbar that augments any teleconference call or tele collaborating system to make accessibility easier. Some widgets already available are listed below. Others can be created easily to match users’ needs.
    • Closed Captioning Widget - that gives users and “always on top” window they can position over teleconferencing systems so they can view the captions and the presentations simultaneously more easily
    • CCC (Controlled Caption Correction) - Same as #1 but anyone in the meeting can correct the captions making them more accurate - especially with names and technical content.
    • Sign Language on Demand - “always-on-top” window with sign language interpreter
    • Trace online Hand Raising Utility - (TOHRU) - version 2.0 - Allows everyone to interact on level playing field - even if they have slow reaction times, are polite, or are following the captions and would never know when the pauses in discussion occur (because the captions are delayed). Also allow cueing for memory aid.
    • Conference Resource Widget - allows users to download accessible versions of content from the conference

3:00-3:25 - Demos by Steve Jacobs President, IDEAL Group, Inc. and CEO, Apps4Android, Inc.

  • Demo 1: Using advanced knowledge discovery technology to render digital documents, not necessarily developed with accessibility, usability, and/or readability in mind, more accessible to individuals with print disabilities.
  • Demo 2: Using advanced knowledge discovery technology to render Blogspot Blogs, not necessarily developed with accessibility, usability, and/or readability in mind, more accessible to individuals with print disabilities.
  • Demo 3: Using advanced knowledge discovery technology to render Wikipedia more accessible to individuals with print disabilities.

3:30-4:05 pm - Jinjuan Heidi Feng Associate Professor, Computer and Information Sciences Department, Towson University

  • Demo 1. A portable context aware assistive solution to aid independent living for people with Autism. A mobile-based solution that aims to assist people with autism in learning and maintaining everyday skills such as cooking and laundry. The application supports both self-guided learning and personalized and intelligent prompting function based on context information.
  • Demo 2. ARMStroke: a mobile app for everyday stroke rehabilitation. ARMStroke allows stroke survivors to extend their home exercises to any location as long as they have their smart phone. The app guides participants through a series of gross motor movements in the context of playing a game and tracks the quality of movements through the embedded accelerometer.
  • Demo 3. SoundsRight CAPTCHA Demo (shown in morning) also available to try.

3:30-4:05 pm (cont) - Erin Buhler Ph.D. Student, Information Systems, UMBC & Aqueasha Martin, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Information Systems, UMBC

  • Demo 1. GripFab: Creating accessible hand grips with 3D printing. We will demo software for the design of these grips and offer hackers a chance to test out our prototype grips. The National Science Foundation funds this research project.
  • Demo 2. Designing Adaptive User Interfaces for Accessible Pointing. We will demo software designs that notify users of changes when using a pointing device and that adapt based on those changes. The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) funds this research project.

4:15 - 4:45 – Sharing! & Closing Remarks

  • Megan Smith, Chief Technology Officer of the United States, @USCTO

Sharing!

  • Section 508 Procurement Playbook, a playbook to ensure contract awards contain strict requirements and incentive payments for achieving Section 508 compliance
  • A11yImage, A project to solve the issue of inaccessible images in social media with a focus on Twitter
  • Video CAPTCHA which counts number of fingers being held up.
  • Crowdsourcing accessibility sidewalk problems & how to use the data?
  • News For Betty Updates such as this one, which adds high contrast style and toggle button.
  • Policy Hack identified problem: The accessibility community lacks good APIs to build good assistive tools and often these tools are recognized as malware. Proposed solution: There should be a meeting to pull together government, OS and tech platforms, and advocacy groups / user community to discuss further.