Ellington

UW computer-science and engineering undergraduates have created five phone applications that are designed to assist disabled users with daily life and will soon be available to the public.

The 10 students were enrolled in CSE 481H, a capstone design class centered around accessibility applications. They presented their work to prospective users at a reception March 15.

Two students were assigned to each of the projects, designing and programming applications specifically for blind, deaf, deaf-blind or cognitively impaired users. All five programs are open source and developed for Google’s Android phone.

According to the department, capstone courses are focused on teamwork and application of higher-level computer-science or engineering concepts to “produce an interesting, working artifact.” At least one capstone course is required for all computer-science and engineering degrees.

Professor Richard Ladner, the course’s teacher, said that the Android is a good vehicle for teaching and that Google has an interest in accessibility.

Ladner, whose parents are deaf, was inspired to work with accessibility technology after seeing the impact of technology on their lives.

Ladner said he steered the students into the community they were serving instead of having them just write code.

The teams designed and programmed their applications from scratch over the course of winter quarter. Among the finished products are a daily task manager for cognitively impaired patients and their caretakers, a braille learning game for blind children and a text-to-speech reader using the phone’s camera.

Senior Janet Hollier and junior Christine Marie Acuario created a dual application geared toward blind children and their families. BrailLearn uses the Android touchpad to teach users to recognize Braille letters, and Braille Buddies lets the user take care of a virtual pet using tokens earned on BrailLearn.

Acuario and Hollier said they wanted to create a Braille learning program that would be both fun and easy for children and their families to use.

“We wanted to see how we can make it fun for the kids,” Hollier said. “Not a lot of games are specifically made for blind children.”

Most of the students said applications similar to their projects already exist on the market. However, they said these products were single-function devices and prohibitively expensive. On the other hand, the students’ programs would be downloadable from the Android application market, most of them free of charge.

“Anybody can look at our code and make changes,” said senior Hussein Yapit, who developed Printed Text Read Aloud, a text-to-speech reader.

About 40 people attended the two-hour reception, many of them members of the local blind, deaf and deaf-blind communities. One of them was Korian Thomas, who is entirely deaf and partly blind. He communicates through tactile sign language, which is a common form of communication among people with hearing and sight impairments.

Thomas was particularly impressed by LocalEyes, a program that helps blind and deaf users find destinations. It is the only application from the class for those who can neither see nor hear.

Thomas said through an interpreter that he could imagine using the other programs himself, but that those applications were more for strictly blind users. However, he felt that they could be modified.

“What’s beautiful about computer science is that you can solve problems, not just talk about them,” Ladner said.

The applications are expected to be released in the coming months, and are undergoing further testing.

Reach reporter Tiffany Vu at news@dailyuw.com.