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Accessible AST-Based Programming for Visually-Impaired Programmers

Authors:

Emmanuel Schanzer,

Shriram KrishnamurthiAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '19: Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Pages 773 - 779

https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287499

Published: 22 February 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Most programmers rely on visual tools (block-based editors, auto-indentation, bracket matching, syntax highlighting, etc.), which are inaccessible to visually-impaired programmers. While prior language-specific, downloadable tools have demonstrated benefits for the visually-impaired, we lack language-independent, cloud-based tools, both of which are critically needed. We present a new toolkit for building fully-accessible, browser-based programming environments for multiple languages. Given a parser that meets certain specifications, this toolkit will generate a block editor familiar to sighted users that also communicates the structure of a program using spoken descriptions, and allows for navigation using standard (accessible) keyboard shortcuts.

This paper presents the toolkit and a first evaluation of it. While the toolkit allows for full editing of code, we chose to focus strictly on navigation for this evaluation, using the navigation-only study design of Baker, Milne and Ladner. Visually-impaired programmers completed several tasks with and without our tool, and we compared their results and experience. Users had improved accuracy when completing tasks, were significantly better able to orient when reading code, and felt better about completing the tasks when using the tool. Moreover, these improvements came with no significant change in task completion time over plain text, even for experienced programmers who navigate text using screen readers set to high words-per-minutes.

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Cited By

Payne WXu ERodrigues IKaney MMau MHurst A(2024)"Different and Boundary-Pushing:" How Blind and Low Vision Youth Live Code TogetherProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3656200(627-637)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635636.3656200
Stefik AAllee WContreras GKluthe THoffman ABlaser BLadner RStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Accessible to Whom? Bringing Accessibility to BlocksProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630770(1286-1292)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630770
Amaral ÂAparecida Paris Baston CBorges M(2024)Assistive Toolkit for Teaching Programming to Visually Impaired ChildrenHCI International 2024 – Late Breaking Posters10.1007/978-3-031-78561-0_12(119-127)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78561-0_12
Show More Cited By

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '19: Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 2019

1364 pages

ISBN:9781450358903

DOI:10.1145/3287324

General Chairs:
Elizabeth K. Hawthorne
Union County College, USA
,
Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Sarah Heckman
North Carolina State University, USA
,
Jian Zhang
Texas Woman's University, USA

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 22 February 2019

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National Science Foundation

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SIGCSE '19

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SIGCSE

SIGCSE '19: The 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 27 - March 2, 2019

MN, Minneapolis, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGCSE '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 169 of 526 submissions, 32%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

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SIGCSE TS 2025

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sigcse

The 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

February 26 - March 1, 2025

Pittsburgh , PA , USA

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Cited By

Payne WXu ERodrigues IKaney MMau MHurst A(2024)"Different and Boundary-Pushing:" How Blind and Low Vision Youth Live Code TogetherProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3656200(627-637)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635636.3656200
Stefik AAllee WContreras GKluthe THoffman ABlaser BLadner RStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Accessible to Whom? Bringing Accessibility to BlocksProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630770(1286-1292)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630770
Amaral ÂAparecida Paris Baston CBorges M(2024)Assistive Toolkit for Teaching Programming to Visually Impaired ChildrenHCI International 2024 – Late Breaking Posters10.1007/978-3-031-78561-0_12(119-127)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78561-0_12
Payne WShen XXu EKaney MGraves MHerrera MMau MMurray DWang VHurst A(2023)Approaches to Making Live Code Accessible in a Mixed-Vision Music EnsembleProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3614489(1-5)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597638.3614489
Potluri VSinganamalla STieanklin NMankoff J(2023)Notably Inaccessible — Data Driven Understanding of Data Science Notebook (In)AccessibilityProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3608417(1-19)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597638.3608417
Kearney-Volpe CFleet COhshiro KAlfaro Arias VHao Xu EHurst A(2023)Tangible Progress: Tools, Techniques, and Impacts of Teaching Web Development to Screen Reader UsersACM Transactions on Accessible Computing10.1145/358531516:1(1-33)Online publication date: 28-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3585315
Ehtesham-Ul-Haque MMonsur SBillah S(2022)Demonstration of Grid-Coding: An Accessible, Efficient, and Structured Coding Paradigm for Blind and Low-Vision ProgrammersAdjunct Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3526114.3558649(1-3)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3526114.3558649
Potluri VThompson JDevine JLee BMorsi NDe Halleux PHodges SMankoff J(2022)PSST: Enabling Blind or Visually Impaired Developers to Author Sonifications of Streaming Sensor DataProceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3526113.3545700(1-13)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3526113.3545700
Ehtesham-Ul-Haque MMonsur SBillah S(2022)Grid-Coding: An Accessible, Efficient, and Structured Coding Paradigm for Blind and Low-Vision ProgrammersProceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3526113.3545620(1-21)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3526113.3545620
Potluri VPandey MBegel ABarnett MReitherman S(2022)CodeWalk: Facilitating Shared Awareness in Mixed-Ability Collaborative Software DevelopmentProceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3517428.3544812(1-16)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517428.3544812
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