SIGACCESS Newsletter

André Rodrigues, Editor-in-Chief, University of Lisbon, afrodrigues@fc.ul.pt

Inside this Issue

Welcome to the October 2019 issue of the ACM SIGACCESS newsletter. This issue highlights the upcoming ASSETS 2019 Workshop AI Fairness for People with Disabilities and features eight of its position papers. Additionally, you will find an article on the benefits of accessibility topics in course curricula.

ASSETS 2019 Workshop: AI Fairness for People with Disabilities

Conference logo showing a bridge, its reflection, and text that reads: ASSETS 2019, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, October 28th to 30th, 2019.

The first article introduces this year Workshop at ASSETS 2019, written by the workshop organizers, Shari Trewin, Meredith Ringel Morris, Stacy Branham, Walter S. Lasecki, Shiri Azenkot, Nicole Bleuel, Shiri Azenkot, Phill Jenkins, and Jeffrey P. Bigham.

The following eight articles are a subset of the position papers to be featured at ASSETS 2019 workshop:

PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM A SURVEY TO MEASURE THE BENEFITS OF ACCESSIBILITY AND UNIVERSAL DESIGN TOPICS IN COURSE CURRICULA

In this article, Kramer presents the preliminary results from a survey gauging the benefits of taking accessibility and Universal Design topics highlighting students interest and career benefits.

About the Newsletter

SIGACCESS is a special interest group of ACM on Accessible Computing. The SIGACCESS Newsletter is a regular online publication of SIGACCESS that includes content of interest to the community. To join SIGACCESS, please visit our website www.sigaccess.org

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SIGACCESS Officers

Shari Trewin, Chair. Shari is a researcher in the Accessibility Leadership team at IBM Research, an ACM Distinguished Scientist, and Chair of ACM's Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS). Her research interests lie in accessibility, usability, and artificial intelligence technologies. Recently she has been working on AI Fairness for People with Disabilities, automation of accessibility test and repair, better prioritization of accessibility isses found by tools, enhancing automated captions, and an accessibility ontology for industry.

Matt Huenerfauth, Vice-Chair. Matt is a professor in the Golisano College of Computer and Information Sciences at the The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he is a member of the faculty of the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies and the Ph.D. program in Computer and Information Sciences. Huenerfauth and his students conduct research on computer accessibility for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, assistive technology for people with disabilities, human computer interaction, and computational linguistics.

Jinjuan Heidi Feng, Secretary Treasurer. Heidi is a professor in the Computer and Information Sciences Department and the director of the School of Emerging Technologies at Towson University. She received a Ph.D. in Information Sciences from UMBC in 2005. She conducts research in the area of Human-Computer Interaction, universal accessibility, Health-informatics, and usable and accessible Security. She works closely with national and local communities to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities through information technology.

André Rodrigues, Newsletter Editor. André Rodrigues is currently a PhD candidate at Universidade de Lisboa with the topic Facilitating Smartphone Use for Blind People through a Human-Powered Approach. His PhD research has been focused on mobile accessibility working closely with visually impaired people.

Sushant Kafle, Information Director. Sushant is a Ph.D. student in Computing and Information Science at the Golisano College of Computing and Information Science, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) under the advisement of Prof. Matt Huenerfauth. His research aims to inform the evaluation and the design of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology for use in captioning for people who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH).