User Experience
Transforming Transportation for the World’s Aging Population and People with Disabilities
The earned privilege of driving tethers us only as far as the road, fuel, and our physical and cognitive abilities can take us. And, we all know what waits for us on the horizon as we age – losing the freedom to safely operate a vehicle. By teaming with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) Foundation […]
Creating Accessible Solutions in Healthcare
I recently participated in an accessibility event with the University of Southern California (USC) Center for Body Computing and the Special Hope Foundation, which promotes the establishment of comprehensive healthcare for adults with developmental disabilities. The Center for Body Computing has a rich history of creating technology that helps people with disabilities. Their goal was […]
The Future of Accessibility Shines Bright
Guest post from Richard Schwerdtfeger, IBM CTO of Accessibility Twenty-six years ago I walked into the IBM TJ Watson Research Center to help create the very first Graphical User Interface Screen Reader for the IBM PC. I did not know it but the impact of making the Graphical User Interface accessible on Windows and OS/2 […]
IBM Strengthens Mobile App Accessibility and Usability
According to data from comScore, people spend approximately 50 percent of all their digital media time on the 4.2 million smartphone apps available today. While the number of mobile apps continues to increase, many are failing to engage and excite customers due to quality, functionality and usability issues. To help organizations ensure that all users, including […]
Designing with Color; a Collaborative Curiosity
by Charu Pandhi (@charupandhi) and Moe Kraft (@moekraft), IBM Accessibility Research. Color is the perception we have to light reflecting off objects. It provides important information about objects and how they relate to each other. Your perception of the object’s color depends upon the context and can radically differ depending on the exposure to light […]
Girls Who Code Tackle Aging and Isolation
High school students from Girls Who Code, a national non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology, are taking on the challenge of helping seniors learn technology to reduce their feelings of isolation and loneliness. The team, consisting of Heewon Kim, Oumou Camara, Paula Sante, and Elizabeth Paz (see photo), created Elders Connect, […]
Key Learnings from the Hearing Loss Association of America Annual Convention
Returning to Washington, DC is usually a nostalgic experience because I spent time there while I was a student at Gallaudet University, the world’s only liberal arts university for the deaf. This time, however, I was looking to the future and not reminiscing about the past. I was attending the annual Hearing Loss Association of […]
What the Porn Industry Can Teach Us About Accessibility
PornHub recently announced (safe for work link) that it was offering described video, or narrated sex scenes, for the blind. Described video or audio descriptions help blind viewers understand what is happening on television programs or films. Let’s remove the moral debate of pornographic movies and examine the actual motivation of making its videos more accessible to […]
Accidental Accessibility
I love the word “intuitive.” It needs little explanation. Things should just work – installing software, the directions for a Scandinavian chest of drawers, or cooking a crème brûlée as easy as they do on television. You’ll also never get complaints about something, especially technology, being “too intuitive.” A fair amount of my day is […]