The introduction of block-based programming has gradually changed the landscape of programming education, particularly for school children. Block languages today, however, have serious technical barriers to students with disabilities. For example, block languages are generally not screen reader accessible, incompatible with braille, and contain serious problems for users with motor impairments. No student with a disability should ever be denied access to learning computer science and they do not have to be. To help rectify this, we present a new approach to the design of block languages called Quorum Blocks. Quorum Blocks uses a custom hardware accelerated graphical rendering pipeline that takes into account how screen readers and other devices work under the hood. We discuss these technical details and demonstrate that accessibility support can be fully achieved without meaningfully losing either the look of modern blocks or their visual output. We present the results from focus groups that highlight the barriers students faced with a variety of disabilities when using the first version of Quorum Blocks. We focus especially on challenges with low vision users, screen reader users, or those using no mouse and only one hand to type. Block languages built using either our techniques, or on top of our libraries, would become accessible out of the box.
Thu 21 MarDisplayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change
15:45 - 17:00 | Accessibility - Inclusive DesignPapers at Meeting Rooms B113-114 Chair(s): Jaromir Savelka Carnegie Mellon University | ||
15:45 25mTalk | Accessible to Whom? Bringing Accessibility to Blocks Papers Andreas Stefik University of Nevada at Las Vegas, USA, Willliam Allee University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Gabriel Contreras University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Timothy Kluthe University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Alex Hoffman University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Brianna Blaser University of Washington, Richard Ladner University of Washington DOI | ||
16:10 25mTalk | Beyond HCI: The Need for Accessibility Across the CS Curriculum Papers Yasmine Elglaly Western Washington University, Catherine Baker Creighton University, Anne Ross Bucknell University, Kristen Shinohara Rochester Institute of Technology DOI | ||
16:35 25mTalk | From Workshops to Classrooms: Faculty Experiences with Implementing Inclusive Design Principles Papers Pankati Patel Kean University, Dahana Moz-Ruiz Kean University, Rosalinda Garcia Oregon State University, Amreeta Chatterjee Oregon State University, Patricia Morreale Kean University, Margaret Burnett Oregon State University DOI |