-
(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.