Accessible Programming with Blocks4All

(jaunty piano tune)

(Boon's Mom) Boon, he's very excited
about the world.

He's up for almost anything.

(Boon's Dad) He's a thinker
and he likes to explore.

He's not afraid to do things.

(Boon) I like computer programming.
I might do some computer programming.

And I also want to be maybe an inventor,
a scientist, and an author.

(Boon's mom) I don't know I guess if it's
so important for him to learn coding

but it's important I feel like for him
to be at least introduced to coding

and then it's his decision
to pursue it or not.

(Richard Ladner) I'm Richard Ladner,

professor emeritus at the
University of Washington.

I've been observing, you know,
this movement

to bring computer science
into K-12 education.

And I've noticed that a lot
of the technologies

that are being introduced
to young children are not accessible,

especially for young children
who are blind or visually impaired.

(Lauren) I'm Lauren Milne.

I'm a graduate student at
the University of Washington

and I'm the inventor
of Blocks4All.

Traditionally, programming has been
done with text-based editing

so you just type in your program
which is of course very accessible

but more recently people have been
creating these environments for children,

these block-based environments,
that have a lot of visual elements

so they're really not accessible
for a child with a visual impairment.

We decided to design Blocks4All
on a touchscreen

because we found that a lot of children,
especially children with visual impairments,

are already using touch screens.

The screen reader VoiceOver that comes
with, for example, iPads,

is very accessible.

(Richard) The outputs for the programs
were typically visual.

There were animations, and
those weren't accessible either.

Instead of having visual outputs
we have tactile output

which is using a robot.

(Boon) Drive forward. Turn left.
Turn left. And then turn left again.

(Screen reader voicing instructions)

(Adults in the background) Here we go, Oh!

(blocks clattering)

(Lauren) Really what I'm envisioning is
I see it as really a prototype

where I try out a whole bunch
of techniques

and I'm hoping that other developers

who are creating these
blocks-based environments

can use some of the techniques
that I'm finding

and make their own environments
accessible.