A poster that my colleagues Sapna Prasad, Amy Hurst, Ravi Kuber, and I submitted to the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012) has been accepted! The poster, called “Participatory Design Workshop on Accessible Apps and Games with Students with Learning Disabilities,” reports on the participatory design workshop we ran in December with Landmark College students, which I previously posted about here and here. Here is the abstract:
This paper describes a Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) outreach workshop conducted with post-secondary students diagnosed with learning differences including Learning Disabilities (LD), Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorders (AD/HD), and/or Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). In this workshop, students were actively involved in participatory design exercises such as data gathering, identifying accessible design requirements, and evaluating mobile applications and games targeted for diverse users. This hands-on experience broadened students’ understanding of STEM areas, provided them with an opportunity to see themselves as computer scientists, and demonstrated how they might succeed in computing careers, especially in human-centered computing and interface design. Lessons learned from the workshop also offer useful insight on conducting participatory design with this unique population.
You can see more information on this project and the workshop at the project website. Check out the paper here.
Lisa Anthony 