 Let's start recording. Hello, I'm Richard Ladner. I'm the principal investigator for Access CS for All. And we are presenting our first in a series of four webinars. We call them Accessible Computer Science Teacher to Teacher. And this one is Blind and Visually Impaired Students. And at the end of the talk, I'll announce the three more that are coming up. I'm very pleased to introduce our presenter today, Gina Fugate, from the University of Maryland. But it's Maryland School for the Deaf. I've really gotten to know her well over the last couple of weeks as we've been preparing for this presentation or this webinar. Richard, School for the Blind. School for the Blind. Oh my god. It's been a long week. I know it's been a long week. This is like the fifth meeting today for me. School for the Blind. So we're doing deaf and hard of hearing next week. Or in a month or two weeks. Thank you. So I'm going to share my screen. And Gina's going to help me through and tell me when to advance. So just take a second. Oopsie, let me go back. So hello, everyone. Like Richard said, I'm Gina. And I'm based at the Maryland School for the Blind. I welcome you here. And I hope this helps you understand how to make things more accessible, not just for blind and visually impaired students, but maybe even for others as well. Next slide, Richard. So a little background about me. I like to point out that my bachelor's is an English education. And I never really even imagined myself teaching initially at a school for the blind, more or less teaching robotics to students who are blind. So it's really been a journey. And I'm happy to share that journey with you. But I also emphasize that because not everybody has a computer science background. Computer science is a shortage area. So as being a teacher, I'm visually impaired. So it is all possible. And I hope that we help make that scene more possible and doable for everyone across the board tonight. I do have a Master's of Education in Visual Disabilities. That's from Vanderbilt University. And that includes the Braille codes. So that's literary, what you would think of for typical reading of text. And the Nimit code is what is used for mathematics. I also have an assistive technology certificate. It's actually pretty old as far as assistive technology goes. So I'm currently updating my assistive technology certificate through the University of Massachusetts. Overall, I have 15 years of teaching experience. One year is Project Cave. That happened while I was at Vanderbilt. That really got me immersed in the field in several ways. I've also served as an itinerant teacher. So TVI stands for Teacher of the Visually Impaired. COM stands for Certified Orientation Mobility Specials. And AT is Assistive Technology. So an itinerant teacher travels school to school, often in a designated county. But it could be a designated territory. So that's working across all age groups and working with general ed teachers, typically in a collaborative manner. It could involve providing some pull out instruction to a student for Braille or assistive technology. I'm really glad that I have that itinerant experience. And then eventually my Vanderbilt sister, Sarah Borley, led me to my journey here at the School for the Blind. So I left Kentucky and I came to Maryland. This is my sixth year at Maryland School for the Blind. So that provides a little bit of my story. But I thought it was really important to provide a photo of what we do with STEM at the Maryland School for the Blind. So the other photo on this slide shows part of the dot five UDocs, which is our school-based first leg owing team. And we're going to play a video that kind of sums up why I'm here and what I do with my students. Can you see the video? Yes. I have to turn the sound on. Can't seem to turn the sound on for some reason. Yeah, we seem to have lost that. Maybe you could say what's going on. That might actually be easier. So you're seeing students working on a first Lego league table. So it has a mat, it has Lego models and the students are working with a Lego EV3 robot. They're running the Quorum programming language. And then it's also showing some shots of what happens in the classroom and some of the different strategies that we use. So there was some flashcards that were laminated. It also had Braille labeling on it. This is colleague Ford. He has since graduated, but he was talking about the challenges of accessibility, but as well as the importance of having these experiences. First Lego league, something that is really unique about it is a lot of people assume that we're competing against other schools for the blind. First Lego league is actually open to everyone. So we are competing against the sighted peers in the public schools. This is actually showing a tactile graphic. That's a Lego EV3 brick. That's one of our students talking about his vision and that he can't see what's on the screen of that brick. That is showing a giant tactile graphic that Lego had sent us in collaboration. The still shots when we have the crowds around us, that was during a tournament. This is back to Paul Lee. And this would also be a good time to point out that we're releasing the PowerPoint for tonight, the Google slide. So it will have the link to this coverage if you'd like to see it and with the sound. There had been a shot of a student at a laptop. They were using form studio for programming, which is accessible. We'll be talking a little bit more about that. That's back to the student on the laptop and then feeling the parts of the Lego motor. Another one of my students who is always one of the most excited about coding and comes to every coding opportunity that we've offered, including on the weekends. This is a robot that had to launch from that launch area, go to a designated location and then come back to home base. So that was all in preparation for first Lego week. Shall I go back to the slides then? Yes, I was just going to say, I think you could exit out of this. Let me just kill this. I have no idea why it... There you go. Okay, so we can go to the next slide, please. So one of the things I like to talk about is what do blind or visually impaired people look like? In my own journey, it seems like everyone always talks about Helen Keller. That is the number one go-to example that I was given when I first started to experience visual impairments. And by all means, I have deep respect for Helen Keller, but there are a lot of other examples out there. And let's not forget about Annie Sullivan, who was visually impaired herself. Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, again, they're great examples, but they're not necessarily the only examples that I would like people to think about. So what does a blind or visually impaired person look like? Let's consider that for a moment. Next slide, please. Do you want me to talk about these people? Because I know them. Yes, Richard's going to help us out on this. He knows a lot of them very well, and then we can make sure we got the pronunciations correct. And I know you know some too. Yeah, so these are eight blind people or people with low vision that I know who are all in computer science or in related fields. Sherry Asencott is a professor at Cornell Tech at the University of Washington, at the Cornell Tech in New York City. She graduated from the University of Washington and she has low vision. Stephanie Ludi is a professor at North Texas State University. She also has low vision. Sean Mee-lin is a PhD student at North Carolina State University and he's totally blind. Ju Young Sao is a PhD student at Penn State University and he's completely blind. Sang Young Han is another former student of mine. I love that picture by the way he's doing, he's touching a tactile graphic, which is a project we worked on together. And he's an engineer at Facebook. Cindy Bennett is totally blind. She was also a grad student I worked with at the University of Washington and she's now a postdoc. She had her PhD last year and she's a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University. Ben Kadesh Patluri is a current PhD student at the University of Washington. He's completely blind. And Sina Brannam is a self-employed, I guess he has his own consulting company and I think he's like a multimillionaire and he does incredible consulting in the accessibility area and he's completely blind. He was a former PhD student also at North Carolina State University. So I feel like these four kind of, you know, I'll call them role models or whatever, but they're people that have really done well. All of them are programmers or developers of one kind or another. So this is what can happen to a blind student at a lower level. Back to you, Gina. And I would just add that there are many other people if you're interested in learning more about that, we can always give you some more resources, but we wanted to highlight especially some of the programmers. So let's talk about what do blind people see? You are considered legally blind if you have at least one of the two eye conditions when wearing the best corrected lenses. So first visual acuity is 2200 or worse in the better eye with corrected lenses. And I'll emphasize with correction because that's something that people often say, I'm legally blind without my glasses. I'm like, well, it counts for your correction. The other aspect of it is the field of vision has to be restricted to 20 degrees in diameter or less in the better eye. So it's a combination of these two things that are considered for most definitions of being legally blind. This would apply to social security. This would be looked at for several standards related to how the person will be referred to in terms of their visual ability. So that gives us... So Gina, just quickly. So blind does include people with low vision. And the blind does include people with low vision and there is a spectrum which will kind of be clarifying this. It's one of the probably the most confusing aspects to people who are learning about blindness and low vision is to understand the spectrum of people. And to give you some examples of impaired vision, there's actually an app called Vision Sim. It's by the Braille Institute. It is only available on iOS but it does give you an opportunity to simulate what it is like to have a visual impairment. So I just made some screenshots that show various visual conditions. The first image makes things look super cloudy, almost like a really dense fog. The second one, everything is really just blurry, but it's much easier to discern color. And the third one has like a black area in the center of the person's vision. So I would just invite you to think about what it would be like to experience that if that was your regular vision when you're traveling in a hallway, when you're looking for a doorway, when you're attempting to access text. It's a good example of the variation that a person can experience and how complex the needs can be. Also a reminder that a simulation is just that, it's a simulation. So I use it as a tool to help a person empathize but this doesn't necessarily equal somebody's exact circumstances by any means. Next slide, Richard. Yeah, just before you go on, if somebody is, if you call totally blind, they still might be able to see some light but they wouldn't be able to see the features like in this hallway. Yeah, okay. So this is another sort of simulation but to give you something that would be a little more of a near task. So this is a screenshot from a computer screen and this is actually part of the form language website. So on the left is a clear image and on the right is a blurred image. In this instance, the image on the right would not allow the person to access anything visually, reading with their eyes. So this would be an example where a person might need a screen reader. Or perhaps getting closer to the screen might help them but of course it would need different tools and resources in order to access the same information. Next slide. And then just to give a couple other instances people are always interested in and how to imagine visual impairment. This first photo in the top left shows two children, two boys and they're each holding a different ball. One boy is holding a soccer ball with that is also red and white and then the other boy is holding sort of like a one just gold colored ball. Then there are five other photos all with different visual simulations. So the second photo has sort of like black globs here and there that block most of the faces of the boys as well as the balls but little pieces can still be seen as well as the background, the fencing in the background but it definitely distorts the image and you could think about how much you would have to move around if that was your vision to try to spot things functionally with your vision and what challenges you would encounter there. The other photo is mostly black and there's really what's often called like a pinhole of vision. This is a really good example of what they said visual in relation to visual field loss. So this is very common with retinitis pymintosa that's actually the eye condition that I have. My vision is nothing like this and again, there can always be a spectrum but it's something to think about. RP as it is often called is actually degenerative so it could get to the point where my vision is like that but in the meantime, you could be in a lot of different stages. Right now it happens that most of my visual field issues are in the lower area of my left eye. The other photo here has sort of like a blurred gray blob that blocks the faces of the two boys and then the rest of the image is a little bit blurry but you could discern some visual details there. Then there is another image that has the two boys and this image is just a little bit darker than the one with typical vision and just slightly blurry and compromised. So again, thinking about if you had that experience how would that impact your reading or your eye fatigue throughout the day? And finally, the last image there is of the two boys and it presents the beginnings of what I would describe as double vision or sort of mirrored images. It looks like it's even presenting almost three things almost like a reflective shadow coming off of the two boys. So again, the impaired vision, just think about crowded hallways, what it would be like to travel in a dimly lit area, changes in lighting, traveling on the stairs, the difference between familiar and unfamiliar areas and navigating around wet floor signs or construction is one of my favorite things to make sure I'm on the lookout for. Next slide please, Richard. So a little bit about demographics. There are 27,000 BVI students, so blind or visually impaired students under the IDEA. So the IDEA is a special education law that requires us to provide educational access to students that are blind or visually impaired. So that comes down to one in 2000 students across the United States. There are probably more under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, but that's a good example of where it becomes really hard to track all of the different students and all the different circumstances and how they're served. About 90% are in mainstream schools with some clusters and bigger metro areas. It is not unusual for there to be just one blind or visually impaired student in a particular school. I can say that when I was an itinerant teacher for a large school district, this definitely proved to be true to the point that our district eventually worked to allow those students to meet other students through community gatherings. But again, imagine going through this and not having any role models that you could relate to or any immediate peers that could empathize with you on a personal level because of their own visual impairment or experience. Next slide, Richard. So continuing a little bit about demographics and supports, those students are often supported by itinerant TBI's. So TBI just as a reminder stands for Teacher of the Visually Impaired. Those students are often pulled out of regular classrooms for support services. So that would be different for each student, of course, catered by their individual education plan. It could mean that a student is pulled out by the Teacher of the Visually Impaired in order to receive braille instruction. Hopefully they have some collaborative instruction between the Teacher of the Visually Impaired and the English teacher. Maybe it's a mixture of sometimes they're in the integrated classroom and sometimes they're receiving pullout. For a student who is visually impaired, it could be a similar scenario. They might receive pullout services for technology to learn how to use a computer and different accessibility features, but they might also receive collaborative support within their regular integrated classroom. The image at the bottom of the slide is a very colorful image of the United States and it is just highlighting that schools and agencies for the blind are located in each state and in the resources that we provide at the end of this presentation, there's a link that breaks down those resources state by state. So we mentioned sort of a spectrum of vision and that's what this slide is relaying. There is a horizontal arrow and on the left end is blind and on the far right is sighted. A little bit to the right is low vision and we actually could have even added the term visually impaired between low vision and sighted. So it's just another way to illustrate the variations that students may be experiencing. With blindness, there is high variation in accessibility needs. So they could need what's called speech outputs. An example of speech output would be what's called a screen reader. I'll talk a little bit more about that as we go on. Magnification is something that I definitely use on a daily basis. There's specialty software to do that. There's also accessibility features within most of the technology devices we use on a daily basis for magnification as well. Braille is also definitely an important support for students who are blind and you might have students who are in the process of learning Braille because of the instability of their eye condition or eye fatigue. Tactographics, Richard had mentioned when he was highlighting one of his former students. Tactographics are raised images. It could be made out of raised lines or Braille that represent a visual image. It just allows it to be felt with the fingers. Also a question I often get is do students have additional disabilities? And the answer to that is they might, but they might not. An example is that students could have autism. They could be hard of hearing. There might be learning disabilities. There could be cerebral palsy. They could have dyslexia. So I like to say that it's really just like anyone else. There could be other conditions or challenges present, but they also could have blindness only. Next slide, Richard. So how students are served? Just to try to break this down again, students may be served in the public schools. We kind of talked about that with the teacher of the visually impaired. Students may be served at a school for the blind. So that's where I'm based at right now. And schools for the blind have multiple resources, of course, students may attend a program that blends the public school and the school for the blind. So that experience is more unique, but one of my favorites. So we've had students who have attended Maryland School for the Blind on a temporary basis. And then after they've received their technology instruction and maybe their drill instruction, they're ready to go back to their home school and they return to the public school environment. We've had other students who come and then decide to stay longer. That is reviewed on an annual basis or even an as needed basis. Students may attend the school for the blind temporarily and then return to public school. So an example of that would be, it's more of a short-term scenario. Instead of staying at a school for the blind for a year or two, depending upon the program and the resources, a student could attend the school for the blind for as little as like one quarter. It's very much catered to their needs and it can vary a lot, state to state. Richard, please. Thank you. So screen readers, they do exactly what it sounds like. They're reading what is on the screen. So we have a series of logos here and hyperlinks. So the first example has the Apple logo and it's hyperlinked to voiceover. Voiceover is something that will speak to you if you have an iPhone. You can also use it on a MacBook. It is one of the most popular screen readers with my students and it is a built-in accessibility feature. So there's no cost there. Talkback is part of Android. So I have the green robot logo there. It's really the exact same concept as voiceover. It's just Android's version. There is the JAWS logo. JAWS stands for Job Access with Speech. JAWS is one of the most popular screen readers. It does require an annual subscription. It is also one of the most long-standing screen readers around and my students would want me to emphasize that recently they added Sharky, which is sort of a digital assistant that you can ask some questions to. The next logo is orange and it has sort of like a cartoon image of a face with some sound waves and it is representing Chromebox for Chromebooks. Again, this is an accessibility feature that is built into Chromebooks. Chromebooks have been especially popular during the pandemic. They are one of the easiest, I guess pieces of technology to access the Google suite of force. They have a lot of different accessibility features. So when a student is using Chromebox, it would read everything to them on the screen. NV Access has a logo that is shown. It's almost like a starburst and it has a circle and then there's a square inside the circle and there's a smaller circle inside that square. It's NV Access's logo says empowering lives through non-visual access to technology. It's actually developed by two gentlemen who are blind and NVDA is a free screen reader. So you could go to NV Access and download that and experience the screen reader for yourself. It is open source. So it's constantly being updated, but it also relies on donations to maintain itself. Next slide. I just want to interrupt you for a second. For the audience, you'll notice that Gina is describing all the images on these slides. And that would be so typical of a teacher of blind and visually impaired because the kids can't see these pictures. And also there might be somebody in the audience today that can't see these pictures. So it's kind of amazing to hear you do this audio description and make sure that everything is accessible. And if you had a blind student in your class, you might want to change your behavior a little bit more as well so that you can include that student. I'll go to the next slide. Thank you for pointing that out, Richard. I do almost without thinking about it. I know. So magnification is visually seeing what is on the screen. There is a screen clip that is showing the menu of something that is called zoom text. So it actually is highlighting a lot of different features here. The zoom level is the magnification level is on two. And then there are options for window, color, pointer, cursor, focus, navigation. You can control the size of your zoom window and the way that things are navigated. It's really an incredible tool for a person to have low vision or are visually impaired. You can customize pretty much every aspect that you can think of. So it really is a great resource. On the lower middle of the slide is something that's known as the Kinect 12. It is an Android based device. So it has apps in it. Think of basically an Android tablet. And then that screen is at an angle. It's on a mount. And there is a gray rectangle below it. So you could put a worksheet or something on that gray area and actually magnify that worksheet or paper onto the screen. And the user of that device could adjust the angle of that screen. There's also almost like a pole that is sticking up in the top right hand corner of the frame. And on the top of that pole is a camera. So that the person can use the camera to basically zoom in and to magnify distant information that would be on a whiteboard, a smart board, even posters and different things that are around the room or even people's faces. So it's definitely designed for someone who is visually impaired or low vision and it has a lot of capabilities. Windows 10 Magnifier has a screenshot there that has, simulates basically a word processing area. So that could be Microsoft Word or Google Docs. And then there is a small window that allows the person to magnify. You heard me reference. I've used magnification and Windows Magnifier is probably what I use more often than anything. I prefer to just magnify the entire screen. But again, you can customize all these different things to fit your needs. Next slide. Before you move on, one thing you didn't say was one of the things that I use a lot is control plus on the webpage. Yes. That's an easy way to, you don't have to buy a product for that. Yes. You can do control plus or control minus if you're on a webpage. If you want to do the Windows Magnifier, it's Windows plus and Windows minus. If you ever mix them up, you'll learn through usage right away how to get this straight. So this takes us on to Braille. Braille has really come a long way over time. So in the top left hand corner is a picture of one of the smaller Braille displays. This is available through the American Printing House for the year. And again, all of these things are featured in our list of resources at the end of this. All of the Braille displays have a series of eight keys that the person would place their hands on. You have six main keys for accessing the dots that are used to produce Braille. And then the rectangle strip that has, you know, the rectangle strip, the rectangle strip that will look like maybe white metal pins based in this picture. That would actually be the area where metal pins would raise in order to provide what my students call instant Braille. The formal name for it is refreshable Braille. But using these devices, you can access text that is in the Google Doc, Microsoft Word or even navigating throughout their, their iPad or whatever device they're using. In the top center image is what I would call old school Braille. So it's been printed. We would call it embossed here at the school for the blind. And there is a person with their index finger on their right hand kind of extended and touching the line for the Braille. So Braille is red with your fingers. You have to develop that taxable sensitivity. And ideally they would be using more of their fingers, not just one finger in isolation. On the top right, believe it or not, this often surprises a lot of people, but the Braille writer is basically a, a lot of people would think of it as like the Braille typewriter. So it has the, the core keys, those six keys that I referred to for producing Braille. It has a space bar. It has a backspace. This is a device where the student would roll in a piece of paper, much like you would with an old school typewriter. And they would produce Braille by pressing on those keys and then be able to take the Braille out of that device. On the bottom left is a black and blue device developed by Freedom Scientific. This is the focus 40 blue because it has 40 Braille cells. And the angle of this photo nicely shows some of that refreshable Braille or insta Braille and somebody accessing that. The bottom right is actually three pictures in one. It is demonstrating the human wear, human wear Braille note touch plus. So it is the first Google certified device. That incorporates a Braille display feature. The first part of it is just the cover that is enclosing the Braille note touch plus. The second one is where the cover has been opened and the physical Braille keyboard is there. So that's where the student would typically type access type Braille by accessing those keys. And then the Braille display, refreshable Braille area is below there. What's really cool about this device is you can actually lift up that keyboard and then there's a Google page demonstrated on the Android tablet that is below that. So in a public school setting or wherever that person is at, they could be typing in Braille and then they could flip up that screen and you would be able to show a peer or a teacher the actual print that they were producing. So it's really a true dual media device and it has foreign language support and all sorts of things. It's an exciting development in our field and they've already expanded on it. But we wanted to give you an example of how students can access Braille in different ways. Next slide. So even more about Braille and tackle graphics. The top left hand picture is what's often called a P off machine. P off stands for pictures in a flash. So it is a P off tackle image maker. They're using something that's called swell paper. You could draw on this paper. You could also print an image on it from, let's say like PowerPoint and you feed it through this machine that heats the paper and it makes the black lines and images become raised. So it really makes sort of instant tackle graphics. The picture that shows a tackle graphic that has been made and it has the person using a better hand positioning for accessing the tackle image. They're using both hands and they're exploring a bar graph as well as tracking lines related to the bar graph and all the information that you would have in a typical graphic. Over on the right side is a product from the American printing house for the blind. This is an example of the way that a student might access information about the human skeleton. This has tackle labels that are large print as well as Braille. There is an image of a skeleton with a list of all the different parts. There are booklets that go with it including print and Braille so there's support for the teacher as well as the student and then there is a model that can be manipulated to also feel the different parts. This is just an example of one of many kids that have been designed to help out students and that at least when I was an itinerant teacher, I was often interested in things like this so it could be integrated to help many students all at once and provide a hands-on experience. So now we finally we're going to talk about coding. So why coding? These quotes are directly from my students. They will say it's cool. It's normal and normal is in all caps though I would say it's cool. I would say it's cool. I would say it's cool. The kids would say they're like any other kid. They want to be normal. One of my students would say that being blind is expensive. Everybody is coding is something else that one of my students will often say. They will also say coding controls the world and I would say it's cool. They're surrounded by technology and they understand what is behind that technology. And then the latest thing that they've started to say to me, is this something I can get paid to do? So they definitely are coming to realize that that is a possibility. Some of my students have met Sina and it's just a little bit of a connection. There's no more powerful connection than giving a student a role model just like we do with visual kids all the time. I think the difference is that we have to be a little bit more purposeful with students that are blind or visually impaired to make sure that they make those modern day connections. The items that are highlighted on this slide again are driven by my students. On the left there is an image of a digital tablet and there's a hand holding a wand. This is one of the most popular products that was out a few years ago and my students knew all about it because they were Harry Potter fans. And they wanted to handle the wand and they wanted everything to be accessible. But they were limited in what they could do because it was not accessible to them. Coding with Minecraft. Minecraft is popular across many age groups. It's sort of like Lego. It's being used by the elementary all the way up through adults and code.org. Also launched coding with Minecraft. But again it's something that is extremely visual. How would you access that or participate in that even if you were a person with low vision? How would you interact or work with someone if you were blind but interested in Minecraft? On the bottom right there is a unicorn robot which of course has its own app with drag and drop blocks. But again the accessibility is just not there for the students. At the same time my students like uniforms and mermaids and all the things that any other students would like. So this sort of sets the desire and reflects what my students are looking at. I just wanted to add a bit. These are three examples of literally hundreds of coding tools we call them sometimes that are available for children. But I would say 99% are not accessible. This is an example of three. It feels like there are countless examples. There is always something coming out. Next slide. Let's look at some resources to help make coding accessible to all. I really want to emphasize all of these things can help provide access for students who are blind or visually impaired. They can be used with any student. That is what we really want to focus on is making an integrated experience. So code and go mouse and coding critters are a product that you can use that is obviously targeted towards elementary and younger kids. The first age group that is emphasized is four plus on the boxes. But one of the cool things about this product is that it's very tactile. It's very easy to use. It's very easy to use. The code and go mouse has raised buttons. I can hand this to a student and they can orient where is the tip of that mouse's face. They can feel the raised buttons. They can orient what direction is represented by that. So this product is fairly accessible and can be used by a teacher of the visually impaired or a classroom teacher in an integrated setting. The green blocks are all raised and fit together almost like a puzzle. If I was using this with a student who is blind I would just add some braille labels and some raised stickers for the arrows that are on the small green squares that are used for coding. An example of this is that there is a yellow straight arrow. You could use even a foam arrow to make that raise so that a student could understand what is represented there. But there's a lot of potential with these products and with a few adaptations they could be what we would call mostly accessible to our students. The next thing is Code Jumper and this is one of the newer products. This has been sponsored by Microsoft. We're not going to play this video but there is a video that's highlighted in this slide so that you can see what this product really does is it provides those hands on pods is what they call it so that the student can use the pods to really replace the block based coding and then they can manipulate the dials and things on the pods in order to create different coding experiences. This is one of the few resources available on Chromebook or Android devices and there are a number of instructional supports through the American Printing House for the Blind and Microsoft will continually be working on this so again you could have a hands on experience you could have students work in teams and you can have a lot of great experiences with this product. So CoQuest is an app that was exclusively made by the American Printing House for the Blind it has an inclusive design for voiceover users so remember voiceover is an example of a screen reader that is available with iOS products this was targeted at age four it includes files for 3D printing so an example of that is you can 3D print one of the aliens that goes along with the storyline in this app there are also free files in order to emboss tactile grids that complement CoQuest so it's really a great resource to benefit multiple students it was purposefully designed for students who are blind or visually impaired it has the voiceover ability it has the high contrast but a lot of these things will complement the accessibility and needs for students across the board so it's really something that could be used in any classroom or with any group of students the Spheroes Spark Plus and Code Snaps has been very popular with our students this only works with the Spheroes Spark Plus so that's roughly $100 it fluctuates a little bit depending upon where you're getting them this app is free and in the picture there's a digital tablet this is actually an iPad and to the right of it there's a series of cutout blocks that have QR codes as well as prints and different details on these QR codes all of this is available for free you can download it and cut them out I think the hardest part of this is cutting out all of those blocks they nicely fit together but there are a lot of different pieces to cut out so there's an image for blue and it has the color blue, it has the QR code blue and it has a little blue paintbrush that rectangle has to be cut out along with red and purple and green and yellow there's a rainbow coloring code command but once you have all of these pieces you basically have a tactile set of what would be equivalent to the drag and drop blocks our kids loved taking all these pieces and putting them together what you do after you have those together is you use that iPad to scan the blocks that you have put together and then once you scan it it will produce the visual block code on the iPad app this still works with voiceover the entire time so it really is inclusive it can be pretty challenging to scan those QR codes if a student is blind or low vision but again the motivation is there in the possibilities of inclusive instruction or interacting with the sibling or a friend is there so that is what excites the students and makes them think back to the statements they made about it's normal this is giving them that coding experience I would also point out that in that bottom left corner there was a what's called the sphero chariot it was a sphero ball that's compatible with lego you could have a lego minifigure or other character curating around depending on the programming experience advance the slide too quickly there you go and then blocks for all again a really cool app it is a free app it works with voiceover it works with the dot and dash robots from wonder workshop it is another example you have all the different possibilities that you would have with any coding app you have sound and variables vehicle functions you can break that down into animal sounds this program had the robot make a lion sound and then it changed the color to blue for the lights and then it made the robot snore so just a simple experience but you can also add other variables and complexities and then it's kind of thinking about in an inclusive classroom why not use this as an app and include everyone so we are going to attempt to play this video this is a young man named Boone and he is using the app with the dash robot that is pictured there we will continue on make sure we have time for questions he is really cute I hope everybody goes back to him at some point but the dash robot is what I would call a tripod he has three areas that are basically shaped as spheres and then his head on top is another ball and it has an eyeball and it's also voice activated next slide Swift Playgrounds is something else that is extremely popular with students it works with voice over so Apple has produced this and definitely made sure that it was inclusive there are also a number of resources to make Swift Playgrounds fully accessible if a student is using Swift Playgrounds on an iPad for example they can actually focus on the visual image that has the graphical character in the Swift Playground world and it will describe the location of it to really simplify it they are still using a grid that you would think of that would be kind of similar to working in Excel or Google Sheets so you have coordinates to focus on and then you have a text based experience where students would either type out the text or select the phrases in order to code there are tactile graphics that could be produced with swell paper or something like that and you can also use it as a boss and if you don't have access to those things of course they can also be purchased outright next slide Lego EV3 is what we use for first Lego leaks so of course I had to highlight that there is a charging adapter there are the sensors that are available for the Lego EV3 robot two of the motors large motors and a small motor the Lego EV3 brick that we had emphasized in that intro video and a battery just different parts of the kit there's also an image of what we call the Lego EV3 puppy a dog bone and then there is an image on the bottom right that is a Lego EV3 kit that has been built into a color sorter so there are Technic pieces that are red, yellow, green and blue and if they're put on the rotating belt there the device could be programmed to actually sort things out by color next slide so this starts to get into how we're able to make it a more accessible experience with Lego Quorum Studio is made by Andreas Stefik and it was designed with the blind and visually impaired in mind but it was made for everyone it is screen reader friendly so zoom would be a term for magnification what Richard had pointed out earlier with control plus and control minus it has that capability within the Quorum Studio itself there's significant support via the Google group listserv for Quorum and then also the Quorum team of course you can put questions out on that Google group and numerous people will respond and I would even point out that Andreas Stefik himself will often respond and correspond with people so it is also a unique experience I think to get that level of support I also want to point out that there's something called Epic so it is an annual conference it's called the experience programming in Quorum and that is how I met Stefik and came to realize that Lego EV3 could be an accessible experience for our students something else that's really important to point out is that Quorum is an evidence-based programming language so it's an understatement to say that Stefik did his homework and he studied what is happening in programming languages and he realized that there's not necessarily evidence-based reasoning behind the design of some of these languages so he started to purposely create and examine that as he was developing Quorum and I'm not sure Richard do we have time to show that? I think we'll move on. I think Gina asked me to read this slide because this slide is showing one example of a program that simply outputs hi there and if you wrote it in Java which is the list of languages taught at the university and it's also AP computer science A for high school students and if I wanted to write a program to do that in Java I'd have to say public class hello left bracket public static void main left parent string left square bracket right square bracket args right parent left curly brace and so on so I'm trying to read it like a screen reader so you can see how arduous this would be and even people who are cited make mistakes in this very simple program I would probably in the Quorum language which was evidence-based as mentioned by Gina you would just say hey there ten times we'd say repeat ten times output in quotes hey there and that's it so which would you rather have read out loud what's on the left or what's on the right and if you go back later on and look at the video that we've referenced Steph it does a really great job of reading or just saying out loud a coding line of Java with the spaces and everything but he has that down to a routine pretty much equivalent to a screen reader so again think of the perspective of somebody who's visually impaired or somebody who's trying to access that line of code on a braille display it's not impossible by any means but listening to all of that and the punctuation and the bracket information is really intensive so thinking about what is more inclusive is definitely what has happened with Quorum next slide okay thank you this is a screenshot of Quorum Studio so it also has a blue rectangle around the editor area that's because at the time of the screenshot I had NVDA on so there is a visual highlight that is possible with the screen reader to kind of show where it is at the Quorum Studio can be completely accessed with key commands so just as an example the project area would be accessed using control one the editor window where you would write your code is control two and the output area is control three what I would emphasize about this experience is that in other programming environments students would not necessarily be able to access all of the information that a visual user would be able to access so Quorum Studio was born accessible another one of the phrases and descriptions that's used for Quorum Studio and it's about providing equal access and equal opportunity for coding next slide so in both of these slides actually I just provided some sample code this is Quorum Studio again with the same emphasis on the key commands for instance I'll focus on the editor area has a sample of music code so this is a really basic code that one of the students had typed out when they were first exploring music code music code is known as MIDI so musical instrument digital interface is what is taking place here this is prior to a recording using the repeat and creating loops but just exploring code within one class period and making a lot of progress next slide this is simply a screenshot of a Quorum programming language homepage so this is what it would look like if you just went to QuorumLanguage.com it has an area that the professional development area social area and then downloads there's also access to the AP computer science principles area all of the libraries are accessible here so this is sort of coding home base for us next slide so I'm known for focusing on those Lego robots so of course I wanted to show you here this is an area where it's beginning to provide access to how to use Quorum with the Lego EV3 robots so this was under the learn area and then there is specifically a robot track that would provide all the information you need to get started with Lego EV3 and Quorum next slide so my students know that the number one rule is go to the library check out the sample code one of the treasures that I found almost unbelievable when I first started to get into Quorum was that there's all of the sample code and all of the library so focusing on the Lego robotics library is a very simple one so the collection has battery button color sensor gyro sensor infrared sensor motor screen sound touch sensor ultrasonic sensor and utility if you click on one of those components it will take you into another screen next slide and so with this one I actually went to the motor and scroll down to the actions table just to show you that there is a sizable menu of actions available and if any of those links are accessed it will take you directly to sample code but there is a description for each of those links that tells you what it does so if you can refer back to this presentation or go and explore the Quorum page it will lead you to code that you can actually use right away next slide so this kind of takes you back to my kids that I often call them this was the last photo of the dot five you dogs as we had wrapped up at a first Lego League tournament so this was our being that we've had since I've been on board with the dot five you dogs this is our seven and eighth graders and there are three of us as coaches there two out of three of us are visually impaired or legally blind and then I also have my faithful comrade my other technology teacher who's in this photo over on the right there are four of my students celebrating when they were awarded a trophy I would emphasize that first Lego League is just a great experience to go and to do it provides students with social opportunities our students are always intimidated and nervous I don't know who's not but they always love it and these kids are attending a tournament on a on a Saturday morning so it's a very long day and I would also say that out of this group there are a couple students who sometimes are very shy and overwhelmed even in my classroom but they went to this first Lego League tournament they competed in the project and they competed in core values they were presenting to strangers that they don't know and coaches are not allowed to help them during this area so there's just so many opportunities for growth and development coding is part of it and a part of it that I love but it brings out so many other opportunities for our students so this shows the other first Lego League team which is really a whole other story so this is 1-88 Optimum and they got the core values award and again this was their last photo right before the pandemic hit the student in the center is actually role playing for the skit so she's in a wheelchair and she's holding her first Lego League team so this is part of their project which involved a Lego QR code if you want to scan this QR code you can learn more about what their project involved so the project is another aspect of a first Lego League beyond the coding but you definitely have an opportunity to learn more about them about 1-88 Optimum is that most of the students in 1-88 Optimum attend public school so there is some overlap between .5 U-Dogs and 1-88 Optimum because we found that some of our .5 U-Dogs just can't get enough of this experience so they ask or they volunteer to come to the 1-88 Optimum coding team and again that meets on Saturday mornings into the afternoon and is above and beyond their school time we also had the gentleman who's the tallest in this group he came to MSB after he had aged out first Lego League so he was technically too old to be part of robotics but he didn't want to miss that experience so we adopted him as a junior coach and he attended practices and learned along with the students and then also mentored them through that experience next slide this is just another shot another photo to share some of our experiences and how varied they have been in school with a blind or presenting to Lego representatives and they actually had Andreas Stefik on video call during this experience so as we have been in this advocacy journey and also learning how to code it's really opened up a wealth of opportunities and we're still advocating and we're still constantly learning but the experience of having Andreas Stefik working with Lego and also collaborating with various universities and even other public school teams is really just invaluable so I think the pictures speak for themselves the kids are smiling and again they're going above them and beyond in order to be there as well as 180 optimum next slide just to make sure that no one is too intimidated this is the photo from the first time I attended Epic so as a reminder that is the annual conference that allows people to go and learn about quorum with the quorum team so we said we were making the computer gang sign if I remember correctly Andreas Stefik is on the bottom left hand corner there so he's a really laid back cool guy and enjoys hearing from people and is always up to the challenge of what to invent or do next so please don't be intimidated by coding or anything that you've heard tonight reach out and get support because it's definitely available these are just some videos that we're not going to play but they are from that Lego visit day and they're the students talking about accessibility and why coding or STEM is important to them it also has a video where Stefik is speaking and he's explaining some of the logistics of quorum and he's also explaining how the studio was actually in development being launched and refined at that time so just more resources for you Gina I thought we'd just go to questions we'll have these resources available to everyone later we'll share these slides I thought we would do that too there is an extensive amount of resources available flipping through them so there's videos and there's direct links to all the different things that we've covered and some things that I would call bonus information if you want to dig a little deeper and just as a reminder we have three more webinars one for teachers one for learning disabilities and one for neurodiverse so I'm going to stop sharing the screen now and we're back and one thing we would like people to do is do the evaluation and is that link in the chat I am going to drop it in right now so while we're answering questions I would please encourage you to ask questions and I'll send an email and figure out what's useful for you all so are there some questions in the chat there are some folks asked about slides so I'll send an email that will have a link to that tomorrow so look out for that then Maria asked about how inclusive so I'm really just digging deeper into Python but I would default back to the example of Java versus quorum of course I'm biased and I'll say that straight out about quorum so there is value in students learning both languages and Sina knows multiple languages but there are aspects of using Python that are very similar to Java it has a lot of extra what's the term Richard it's punctuation and spacing there's spatial challenges in there because of the indentation they got rid of the curly braces but they added indentation to take care of that if you don't have your screen reader on verbose you're just going to miss the spacing all together to deviate a little bit one of the other things that's happening with quorum studio right now is that they have already launched it and they continue to expand it but they're making graphics and they're going to be coded into the fully accessible by a blind coder so a blind coder could develop a game using quorum and still access all of the information that you would need to be thinking about the angle of the character and where it's moving it's a really cool opportunity with any other programming language that I know of and Stefik is constantly working on that Epic was virtual last year and it will be virtual this year in July but that would if you're really interested in comparing those I would encourage you to drop in on Epic and I'm sure you could be given not only more examples but also examples from multiple perspectives from really experienced coders are there other questions there's also some discussion in the chat about the extent to which a lot of these tools are tied to one platform or another rather than kind of being platform agnostic and I don't know if you all know of something that's platform agnostic or have any commentary on that I can say a little bit because I worked with Lauren Milley on blocks for all and to just get it going on iOS for the iPad that was a huge challenge converting that to an Android tablet would be 50% more work most of these projects people are not making tons of money on them so it's difficult to do multiple platforms now for blocks for all there is the issue of using the Dash robot so we are considering using doing the API for other robots and also I should say something about the iPad that it is really quite accessible for blind children there's also a question about grid based coding and unplugged activities in ways that you can make those accessible to blind students you might not know what unplugged activities are but there's a website computer science unplugged I don't know if you've done any of those I haven't done any of those but I would believe that Coded Go mouse is an unplugged activity you're not using a tablet or anything there so I'm familiar with the concept and then I would also going back to Stepick's work and things they purposely created unplugged activities that are complementary in the computer science that was developed so I have a comment about the unplugged activities many of them can be made to be accessible maybe I have invented a few of my own and I once did a workshop with some blind kids and we did sorting algorithms we had them sit in chairs and then they were say sorting on their birthdays or their height or something like that and so with their height they had to do kind of a local they were doing like insertion sort and so they had to do compare their heights standing next to each other and they'd have to either stay where they are or change seats, things like that but when they did something like on their birthdays they could shout out their birthdays and so they had this sort of other mechanism by doing broadcasts and so they could actually sort faster by broadcasts and they kind of discovered that on their own so it's kind of a very rich activity so yeah you can make these computer science unplugged I mean it might take some creativity but it's possible there's another question about programming tools that are more reliant on music and sound than visual output that can be problematic for this population what are some good tools that focus on music and sound is that question do you think it's related to mainstream tools or specialized like the code jumper is basically audio output it's tactile input if you like but audio output so Gina, do you have any thoughts I kind of had the same question on what they were focusing oh sorry do you have any suggestions for programming tools that are more reliant on music or sound rather than visual output well I mean going back to the MIDI code would be the first go to there and there is a MIDI library and I'm still going to point back to that Google group there are a lot of people on there that have really intensive interest in MIDI one of my epic friends co has been working on a project that has a jukebox approach to MIDI so again there's really a lot of support there and I'll also put in the plug that form studio was working on working on focusing across different platforms focusing on iOS as well as Android so it's always always working on improving so it's one of my most favorite things to do is to ask Stephak hey can we do this he really has never told me no he just always has it on a timeline somewhere excellent Stephak is always looking for new things to do with form we are getting close to time somebody asked about one last question blocks for all it only works on iPads is that correct Richard that's correct there are a couple questions about sphere of drums is all audio output but it might not be accessible and somebody asked about Orion Graffiti any word about whether that is accessible Graffiti if they're talking about what I think they are is sort of think of a braille display with multiple rows of braille cells so there were a number of products in the works that were focused on sort of instant tackle graphics at least one of them I think is on the market but it's one of those challenges of how do you produce something like that in such a low incidence field and still have it at a marketable price that is really achievable for schools and clients so I'm not sure what the exact status of it is but it's definitely not readily available right you know and I want to thank you for your presentation that's fantastic and I also want to thank the audience today and everybody that's in the audience you registered we have your email so we'll contact you to do that and also I we talked about the evaluation and make sure that you do that if you have the link there just open it now on your computer before you go to bed denied I guess hopefully anyway so and I wanted to say and we can we can thank Gina if you go to reactions down there there's an applause on the left and you can just put that up and it'll pop up everybody's applause coming up on the screen so thank you so much Gina thank you for having me and everybody that's made the journey possible I hope this was helpful to you out there in the audience and please feel free to be in touch and I hope to see you at Epic great