We just heard that our paper on "Field Study of a Tactile Sound Awareness Device for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users" was accepted as a 2-page ISWC Brief! This work was a collaboration between Makeabilty Lab and DJ's previous school MIT Media Lab, and reports on important findings related to use of wearable tactile technology for 'experiential' sound awareness, self-awareness, the impact on presence, and long-term behavior.

CSCW2020 June submission results were just released (link), and we were incredibly excited to find out that our paper entitled "Urban Accessibility as a Socio-Political Problem: A Multi-Stakeholder Analysis" was accepted with minor revisions. Of the 593 submissions, only 47 were chosen for 'Minor Revision' (7.9%) and 273 for 'Major Revisions' (46.0%).  Through semi-structured interviews with five stakeholder groups, we examine the socio-political challenges surrounding accessible infrastructure development. The paper has some important findings around policy making, gentrification, and urban development tensions related to accessibility and extends and complements our broader research in this area (e.g., Project Sidewalk). Congrats to lead PhD student Manaswi Saha and the rest of the team!

PhD student Liang He was just accepted into the UIST2020 Doctoral Symposium for his dissertation work entitled "Designing, Controlling, and Fabricating On-Demand Structures." Congrats Liang!

We just received news that two of Dhruv Jain's first-authored submissions were accepted to ASSETS'20—an amazing accomplishment. Importantly, the work itself is impactful and diverse. Congrats DJ and all collaborators! The papers are linked below: Jain, D., Potluri, V., Sharif, A. (2020). Navigating Graduate School with a Disability: A Trio-Ethnography. Proceedings of ASSETS 2020. 17 pages. To Appear. Jain, D., Ngo, H., Patel, P., Goodman, S., Findlater, L., Froehlich, J. E. (2020). SoundWatch: Exploring Smartwatch-based Deep Learning Approaches to Support Sound Awareness for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users. Proceedings of ASSETS 2020. 16 pages. To Appear.

The Makeability Lab had four papers accepted to CHI this year. The acceptance rate was 24% (760 accepts of 3126 submissions). Congrats to the lead PhD students: Steven Goodman (HCDE), Dhruv Jain (CSE), Seokbin Kang (CS), Wendy Roldan (HCDE), and all our wonderful collaborators.

• Goodman, S., Kirchner, S., Guttman, R., Jain, D., Froehlich, J., Findlater, L. Evaluating Smartwatch-based Sound Feedback for Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Users Across Contexts, CHI2020
• Jain D., Mack., K., Amrous, A., Wright, M., Goodman, S., Findlater, L., Froehlich, J. HomeSound: An Iterative Field Deployment of an In-Home Sound Awareness System for Deaf or Hard of Hearing Users, CHI2020
• Kang, S., Shokeen, E., Byrne, V., Norooz, L., Bonsignore, E., Williams-Pierce, C., Froehlich, J. ARMath: Augmenting Everyday Life with Math Learning, CHI2020
• Roldan, W., Gao, X., Marie, A., Hishikawa, T, Li, Z., Zhang, E., Froehlich, J., Yip, J. Opportunities and Challenges in Involving Users in Project-Based HCI Education, CHI2020

We plan to post the camera-ready versions of the papers and some videos in January!

The Makeability Lab and the UbiComp Lab hosted students from Northwest High School. The high school students were all taking an Internet of Things (IoT course), which focuses not just on building IoT technology but the societal implications. For example, students are asked to consider: How can this technology help us achieve a more just and equitable world? How will we be able to ensure that these devices improve our quality of life without imprisoning us? What ethics or code of conduct should guide the IoT?

Venkatesh spoke about his research supporting blind programmers, Manaswi spoke about Project Sidewalk and urban accessibility visualizations, and Dhruv spoke about his work on sound awareness tools for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.