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Richard Ladner elected AAAS Fellow for his leadership in making computing education and careers accessible to people with disabilities

Richard Ladner conversing in sign language with three students in a computer lab Allen School professor emeritus Richard Ladner has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his “distinguished contributions to the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the computing fields.” One of 26 leading scientists in the organization’s Information, Computing & Communications section to attain the rank of Fellow this year, Ladner has devoted the past two decades to research and advocacy aimed at making computing education and careers more accessible while designing technologies… Read more →
January 26, 2022

Allen School and CMU researchers introduce SPRITEs for nonvisual access to graphical website content

Many web users have become accustomed to navigating page content with the help of spatial and visual cues such as navigation bars, tabs, and icons. But for those who are blind or low-vision, the proliferation of visually rich, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) make it challenging to locate and consume information online — even with the help of a screen reader or braille display. Now, thanks to Allen School professor Jennifer Mankoff and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, help is literally… Read more →
April 18, 2018

CSE’s Richard Ladner and Tactile Graphics Project featured in Eyes on Success audio show

Last week, Eyes on Success interviewed UW CSE professor Richard Ladner about his long-running Tactile Graphics Project, a tool for creating universally accessible graphs and charts. During the half-hour audio show, Ladner talked about the importance of tactile graphics in providing blind students with access to figures and diagrams in textbooks, and how computer vision and machine learning techniques enable more rapid translation of graphical images for this purpose. He also talked about Tactile Graphics with a Voice, which is… Read more →
May 18, 2015

UW CSE friends and family again score big in Technology Review TR35!

Since 1999, the editors of Technology Review have honored the young innovators whose inventions and research they find most exciting; today that collection is the TR35, a list of technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35.  Selected from more than 300 nominees by a panel of expert judges and the editorial staff of Technology Review, the TR35 is an elite group of accomplished young innovators who exemplify the spirit of innovation. Their work – spanning medicine, computing, communications,… Read more →
August 17, 2009

Jeff Bigham Selected 2009 NCTI “Technology in the Works” Awardee

UW CSE’s Jeff Bigham‘s team is one of five teams awarded the 2009 NCTI Technology in the Works award.  His team was selected to examine web browsing made accessible for blind students— Enabling More Effective Use of the Web Anywhere with WebAnywhere and TrailBlazer. The National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI) assists researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs in creating innovative learning tools for all students, with special focus on students with disabilities.   NCTI sponsors this annual competition to inform the… Read more →
May 6, 2009

Helping the Blind and Deaf Feel at Home in a Wired World

Columns, the magazine of the University of Washington Alumni Association, reports on the long and fruitful work that Boeing Professor in Computer Science and Engineering Richard Ladner has done making technology and opportunity more available to blind and deaf people. Dr. Ladner had two deaf parents, which helped him understand the challenges faced by those with sensory disabilities and motivated him to work to help lower barriers A notable project to come out of Ladner’s advocacy work is WebAnywhereRead more →
March 4, 2009

Recipients of Third Annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration Announced

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded prizes to ten not-for-profit institutions.  UW CSE’s own WebAnywhere was one of this year’s recipients.  Vint Cerf, presenting these awards at the Fall Task Force meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) said the following: “The MATC Awards have a history of recognizing projects that improve accessibility for people with visual or other impairments, and this year is no exception. The next awardee is the University of Washington, for Project WebAnywhere. By… Read more →
December 9, 2008

Richard Ladner Receives 2008 Purpose Prize

Richard Ladner, UW CSE professor, was one of 15 recipients of the 2008 Purpose Prize, an award for social innovators over 60. Ladner has shifted his focus from computer science theory to developing better technologies for disabled people. He and his students and colleagues have developed such applications as WebAnywhere, software to allow the blind to use the internet on the go, MobileASL, an application for deaf people to use video communication on cell phones, and… Read more →
December 4, 2008

CSE’s Jeff Bigham, WebAnywhere in Puget Sound Business Journal

“Just imagine you’re blind and trying to go online at an internet cafe in Paris. Until now, unless you had $1,000 worth of software installed, it was just about impossible. But in recent weeks hundreds of blind people found their worlds opening up online with help from a web-based program called WebAnywhere. The program was created by Jeffrey Bigham, a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Department. He knew that many applications were moving… Read more →
July 1, 2008

“Opening new portals for the blind”

Read the article here. “WebAnywhere, an Internet-based service released last month, boasts an even better price tag: free. The program’s innovation isn’t so much about what it does — no more than existing Web readers that convert written text to digital speech — as it is about its availability on almost any computer.”… Read more →
July 1, 2008

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