Software development has progressed by leaps and bounds in the last few decades. Modern programming environments are now rarely just scary terminals that provide little feedback or information to the user and evidence on software engineers and their needs is improving over time. However, one group has been largely left out: people with disabilities. There is now a vast amount of software development tools and initiatives that either do not take user differences into account at all or in some cases actively “turn off,” probably accidentally, crucial features that allow our friends with blindness, deafness, or neurological differences to innovate and create. We can fix this, while making the next generation of software development better for everyone. In this talk, we will explore the wild world of software development and disabilities. Along the way, I will show proposed solutions, and working prototypes, for data science, game programming, and other areas to kick-start a conversation.

Bio: Andreas Stefik is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For the last decade, he has been creating technologies that make it easier for people, including those with disabilities, to write computer software. He helped establish the first national educational infrastructure for blind or visually impaired students to learn computer science and invented the first evidence-based programming language, Quorum. The design of Quorum is created from data derived through methodologies similar to those used in the medical community. He has been a principal investigator on 5 NSF-funded grants, many of which related to accessible graphics and computer science education. Finally, he was honored with the 2016 White House Champions of Change award and the Expanding CS Opportunities award from Code.org and the Computer Science Teachers Association.