Save the Date! The Deaf & Hard of Hearing Accessible Technology Conference When & Time: Sept 16–17, 2025 | 9 AM–4 PM EST Where: In person at Gallaudet or online via Zoom Register by Sept 5. ASL & CART provided for all sessions. Details: gu.live/a11yconf

Student Call for Proposals! Present your DHH-accessibility research at the 2025 Deaf & Hard of Hearing (DHH) Accessible Technology: State of Science Conference! Win prizes + recognition! Deadline: July 23. Details + submit: gu.live/a11y-submiss...

Student Call for Proposals! Present your DHH-accessibility research at the 2025 Deaf & Hard of Hearing (DHH) Accessible Technology: State of Science Conference! Win prizes + recognition! Deadline: July 23. Details + submit: gu.live/a11y-submiss...

Severe blows to the ‘deaf-scientist pipeline’ must not mean abandoning its best practices. Here is how to support current and future students, says Wyatte C. Hall https://go.nature.com/4eDVjqp

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is conducting an in-person deaf-friendly study on text-to-speech technologies at Gallaudet University. Looking for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have hearing loss to join our co-design session

Deaf and hard of hearing authors have to expend considerable extra time and resources to create multimedia content, compared to their hearing peers. Much of people's attention has focused on consuming accessible content, but not on ensuring that the content creation process is accessible. 1/2

Oliver Suchanek and @katta.bsky.social at #CHI2025. Refreshing to see a good deaf-hearing collaborator dynamic: both presenters signed, and interpreters did the voicing. So much more respectful than the typical scenario of the deaf presenter signing and the hearing presenter talking up a storm.

code generation presents a new opportunity to make UI code accessible, but @peyajm29.bsky.social's work shows current codex models mostly fail on #a11y; her system CodeA11y improves accessibility of UI code w/ three strategies other tools could adopt 4:20pm in AnnexF206 dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but 2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but 3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So 4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

As Bluesky has grown, I've seen a lot of backsliding on alt text. Please try to be considerate to others and include alt text with all of your images. It helps everyone. Indeed, in the "accessibility" setting in Bluesky you can set it to make sure you add alt text, which is a useful thing to do.

"The question the embattled university president asked [me], in effect, was how a university fights an authoritarian regime." "I told him to frame his fight to gain as many allies as he can." Note FIGHT. Universities must act. Keeping their heads down won't work. 1/4 www.chronicle.com/ar...

Amidst a lot of uncertainty these days, @shaunkane.bsky.social and I re-affirm our commitment to diversity and community for ASSETS 2025. With that in mind, accepted papers will appear in the proceedings, regardless of presentation/attendance modality. Please see our blog post for more.

Government-sanctioned discrimination coming?

UPDATE on Mahmoud Khalil from his lawyers and his wife: "Today I spoke to Mahmoud and he is healthy and his spirits are undaunted by his predicament." (Legal team now includes ACLU, CCR.)

If I, as a disabled person, post something referring to “disabled people,” don’t correct me by arguing that I should say “people with disabilities.” My identity is my choice.

Worried about what the Trump/Musk cuts mean for the future of American higher education? This one pot Nom Banh Chok will make you feel you're in Pol Pot's Cambodia.

🚨 Many NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) are being cancelled for Summer 2025. www.reddit.com/r/REU/commen...

There’s much talk about how early career researchers are getting shafted. Researchers with disabilities and those who are working hard to maintain mentoring pipelines: hold my beer.

I hate to keep reminding people that we are all one car accident or chronic illness away from becoming disabled. We need to use all of our people to make this country work.

There’s much talk about how early career researchers are getting shafted. Researchers with disabilities and those who are working hard to maintain mentoring pipelines: hold my beer.

Donald Trump’s Next Diversity Target: People With Disabilities www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The #BASConf25 abstract submission portal is open! Submit your abstracts for presentations, panels, lightning talks, or posters here: blogs.city.ac.uk/bas2025/subm... • Submission Deadline: 17 Mar 2025, 9AM UK • Notification of Acceptance: 2 May 2025 • Conference: 18-20 August 2025 #aphasia

Lee Atwater had a pungent and famous quote about how once conservatives could no longer use the n-word they used things like “states’ rights” to invoke the same spirit. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration any more — if it ever was — to say they use DEI as the n-word.

"All NSF grantees must [cease] all non-compliant activities... that [use] DEIA principles and frameworks" The EO asks that DEIA "discrimination programs" be terminated "to the maximum extent allowed by law." But it is illegal to fail at accessibility and to discriminate. I'll be obeying the law.

I went through Trump's birthright citizenship EO, line-by-flagrantly-unconstitutional-line, to highlight the illegal, the racist, and the just plain incorrect understanding of the constitutional *right* to citizenship. My latest in @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Participate in a 1.5 hour study on the accessibility of interactive personal assistants and earn $50 in cash. Fill out the Qualtrics form if you are interested: gu.live/viJEA For more information, contact at [email protected]. This study has been approved by the Gallaudet University IRB.

Participate in a 1.5 hour study on the accessibility of interactive personal assistants and earn $50 in cash. Fill out the Qualtrics form if you are interested: gu.live/viJEA For more information, contact at [email protected]. This study has been approved by the Gallaudet University IRB.

Highly recommend this reflective essay from Temple Prof. Seth Bruggeman. It captures the central challenge of teaching today in a system that over time has become entirely transactional, and then suddenly technology that could satisfy the transaction arrived. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

I talked to reporters from Deaf Journalism Europe about the economic and societal costs and benefits of sign language avatars vs. human sign language interpreters, and the slippery slope of access rights. www.deafjournalism.eu/sign-languag...

Check out @sightlesskombat.bsky.social article on being without sight and how that does effect the ability to work with studios on location. The industry needs to acknowledge the location bias that comes with working with disabled people. #accessibility #disability www.linkedin.com/pulse/access...

One of my 'obsessions' is interior design, and that is largely shaped by my experiences with multiple disabilities. I think a LOT about competing access needs & how to harmonize them.

Looking at the most popular posts in the last 24 hours, and alt text usage really has fallen off a cliff

Good news for the @bsky.app #accessibility and #disability communities: @habengirma.bsky.social (Haben Girma) is now on this platform. A #BlueSky author and much more. Put her in your Starter Packs. habengirma.com/book/

What Is Video Game Accessibility Consulting? - Access-Ability Text: access-ability.uk/2024/11/22/w... Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V33...

This doesn't even get into the nuance behind what each accessibility design or setting offers. If a game has dozens of options, it will be nominated. If it has settings for the Big 3 disability categories, it will be nominated. But for stuff like Cognitive Accessibility? That's a tough sell.

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is conducting a Zoom focus group on deaf-friendly text-to-speech technologies at Gallaudet University. We are looking for participants who are deaf, hard of hearing or have hearing loss.

Deaf readers are the ultimate plot twist for the Science of Reading. SoR insists sound-based approaches (oral language, phonics, phonological awareness) are required. Yet here we are, a whole community of deaf folks reading without hearing or speaking a word. What does that tell you?

Many good principles laid out here, but #7, deaf leadership in sign language AI projects, is really the most critical. In the USA, there are now many qualified deaf researchers to lead this work. If it’s too hard to find European counterparts, then folks need to prioritize capacity building.

Alright here it is… we shouldn’t put “accessibility” things in games just because competitors did it. Approaching accessibility by doing whatever competitors did is missing the goal: 1. It might not be right for that game. 2. It might not actually have been the right approach to begin with.

One thing I love about gaming is observing the freewheeling accessibility innovations in this space. Some of these even have changed my mind about what constitutes best practices elsewhere. Today, let’s talk captions in VR. I truly feel we’ve been applying the wrong lessons from 2D media. 1/

<whispers loudly> Don't forget to add alt-text to your images

Can’t recommend the Dashboard enough. It’s such an awesome product of NDC.

Interpreters, it is super freaking AWKWARD for you to assume that a client will request you again if they have not explicitly said they will. By asking about upcoming potential assignments, you infringe on their ability to choose which interpreters they wish to work with.

There are two very important lessons in this. (1) Situational disability is very common. (2) Rather than asking students to procure accommodation letters, ask yourself “How can I make my course accessible?” 1/

I did a thing. If you’re a Deaf content creator and would like to be added, let me know. go.bsky.app/Fnx7oL9

In #accessibility, personal agency, as well as lived experience and situational factors are critical. I have some thoughts about framing access within these concepts, as a researcher, teacher, and as a deaf person with lived experience growing up in a place & time where access was nonexistent. 1/

I recommend these segments where CNN’s Laura Coates interviews Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, in what is Graber’s first television interview. There are bits about moderation, decentralization, monetization and of course: echo chamber. Open captions added. First question: what does decentralized mean? 1/5