[Music]

If you're a camera, a 3D camera
and you're looking at her, and she's

pointing in that direction. The question 
is What do you call 'x'

What do you call 'Y' and 
what do you call 'z'.

I would want to take all of the knowledge 
that I've learned through out this camp.

Using Quorum and maybe develop my 
own game. Maybe later down the line.

I really want to teach others. 
That's sort of what I like to do.

And with Quorum I can 
do that much easier.

Technology jobs are in demand.

And an understanding of computing and 
coding are important for anyone pursuing

these opportunities. But learning
programming languages can be difficult for

any new student, including 
some students with disabilities.

That's why Quorum was created.

My name is Andreas Stefik. 
I am an assistant

professor of Computer Science at The 
University of Nevada Las Vegas.

I invented the Quorum programming
language, at first, then my wife and I

actually created several 
versions of it together.

It was originally designed to help blind 
and visually impaired students learn to

program more easily.

The reason was because at the time 
a lot of computer science

was moving toward 
a very visual content.

And that in general makes a lot of sense,
however, not if you're blind.

I'm Richard Ladner, 
professor in computer

Science and engineering at the
University of Washington.

So you really need similar code 
to what you have there already.

Children who are blind, who can't see
can actually program in Quorum.

And make things that talk, 
or have sound or have music.

So they're not 
always so visual.

If you look at almost all
the tools that are out there

for children, they're all
super visual.

And this one is visual and auditory.

So that makes it much better for every
body.

I am Lauren Milne, I'm a graduate student

at University of Washington 
in Computer Science.

I work with Richard Ladner 
and I do a lot of research

in programming languages
specifically for blind students.

It has full support for 
screen readers and braille displays

and it has a lot of features, 
it's very easy to incorporate

audio in programs and a lot 
of things that you can play

around with in audio 
so it means you can

make really accessible,
you know, you can

quickly and easily 
make accessible games

or whatever you'd 
like using Quorum.

Quorum's features are 
universally designed

Making it an easier language 
to learn, in general.

One of the reasons 
why Quorum is easier

in some cases, for people 
to learn and grasp,

is because the language is simpler.

Which impacts people 
with learning disabilities.

For example, if I were 
to tell the computer

to do something over and over again,

in a language like Java, I would say
(language on screen)

Which obviously means that we should do

something 10 times. In Quorum,
I say repeat 10 times.

I find, personally, 
reading Quorum programs

a lot easier than reading 
C programs or

Java programs.

I can understand them more easily 
and so I feel like there's some major

advantages from the get go.
Just that simple elegance.

Most languages, 
after every single line

you have to put a semi colon.

Why do you have to put a semi colon?

It seems to be just tradition. 
It doesn't need to be there.

And Quorum has no semi colons.

They hypothesized that it 
would be really good

for certain students 
with learning disabilities.

Quorum doesn't use braces, 
it uses indentation

and it uses keywords instead 
to indicate the end of loops.

I want you to type 
the word model,

and then I want you 
to type the word box.

Now there's a red underline here 
because we haven't added.

Over the years, 
Quorum has gained popularity.

I'm Dominic and I'm really into computers,

and really enjoy using Quorum, and have

used other computer programs 
before like C++ and Java.

One of the things that stands out 
to me in Quorum is the punctuation.

And it's like really easy because you 
don't have to add in all the semi colons

and all the annoying like #'s and @
symbols and everything.

You just use words basically, 
which is way easier than using

all those confusing symbols 
and I think that makes it

easier for me to program 
in Quorum than in other languages.

Hi, I'm Alyssa. 
What makes Quorum easier

is the way they wrote, 
the way they program

for us to write the code.

So we don't have to add 
semi colons and brackets and

paranthesis and all this stuff.

They made it easier. 
You can just type in a

word "output" lets say for example and
then you can write in quotes

whatever you want 
the computer to say.

And that's what makes it 
a lot more unique than other

programming languages like Java.

I'm Mary. You can do
a lot more things in

Quorum with less lines 
of code than in

some other things that I've used before.

Quorum is evidence based. 
Using the results of

Scientific experiments to 
determine how to make

the language easier to use.

Quorum provides two primary benefits.
One is everything is free.

And then number two,
at the end of the day,

all of the materials that 
we use and that we give

to people are vetted 
both by teachers and

students and are 
vetted in experiments

through the scientific method.

The result is a programming language

that is creating a more 
inviting environment

for computing students.

A lot of people, 
I have seen this

in intro classes that I've taught, 
they come in and they get

really intimidated when 
they start programming.

There's all sorts of bugs, 
and it can be very frustrating.

People drop out, and very often 
the only people who stick around

are people who come into a 
college course with previous

programming experience.

Anything that lowers that initial entry 
is going to bring a lot more people,

a lot more diversity because of that.