[Colloq] Hiring Talk, Jeff Bigham, Wednesday, April 1

[Rachel Kalweit]

The College of Computer and Information Science presents a hiring talk by:

Jeffrey Bigham
University of Washington

Wednesday, April 1
1:30pm
366 West Village H

TITLE:
Improving Access for Blind Web Users

ABSTRACT:
The web is an unparalleled information resource, but remains difficult
and frustrating to use for millions of blind and low vision people.
My work attempts to achieve effective personalized access for blind
web users with applications that benefit all users, even sighted ones.

I'll discuss the following projects to demonstrate how:  (i)
WebinSitu facilitates longitudinal remote user studies and has helped
quantify accessibility problems, (ii) Usable CAPTCHAs dramatically
improve the success rate of blind users on CAPTCHA problems and
illustrate the potential  of improving an individual interaction,
(iii) TrailBlazer helps users efficiently connect interactions
together by predicting what users might want to do next, and (iv)
WebAnywhere adds speech output to any web page without installing new
software, even on locked-down public terminals.  These projects have
made significant advances in web accessibility and usability for blind
web users, and yielded general lessons applicable for adapting,
personalizing, and delivering better content to all users.

BIO:
Jeffrey P. Bigham is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science and
Engineering Department and a member of the inter-disciplinary HCI
group DUB at the University of Washington. He graduated with a B.S.E
in Computer Science from Princeton University in 2003. His work
enables end users to improve the interfaces that they use to access
web content. Jeffrey started the WebInSight project with Richard
Ladner to improve access for blind web users. As part of this project,
Jeffrey has conducted studies to understand the challenges faced by
blind web users and developed innovative solutions to address those
problems. He created the WebAnywhere web application so blind web
users can access the web from any computer, including locked-down
public terminals. For his work, he has won the Microsoft Imagine Cup
Accessible Technology Award, the W4A Accessibility Challenge
Delegate's Award and the Andrew Mellon Award for Technology
Collaboration. In 2008, he became an Osberg Presidential Fellow.

Host: Timothy Bickmore