Methods and Tools for Born-Accessible Design
Thursday, November 20, 2025, 11 a.m.
Bahen Centre for Information Technology, BA 3200
This lecture is open to the public. No registration is required, but space is limited.
Abstract:
Digital technologies, software applications, websites, and documents are often created without considering accessibility for people with disabilities. The inaccessible technology or content is then either remediated for accessibility, remediated for accessibility only when there is a complaint from a person with a disability, or is never remediated for accessibility. Remediating technologies after-the-fact is not a cost-effective approach, and the time delay between when digital technologies and content are built and released and when they are made accessible can itself be a form of societal discrimination. For years, disability rights groups have demanded born-accessible design, and some government policies are starting to require born-accessible design, yet the research literature in human-computer interaction and user experience does not yet define born-accessible design or any methods for born-accessible design. This presentation will focus on describing our work on born-accessible design in two areas: tools and methods. We have been collaborating with Adobe on developing software tools to help support content creators in adding accessibility markup during their workflow, leading to the creation of born-accessible content which needs no remediation. And on a broader level, we have been working with disability rights groups, technology companies, and policymakers, to build a methodological framework for implementing born-accessible design.
Bio:
Jonathan Lazar is a Professor in the College of Information at the University of Maryland, where he is the founding director of the Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility (MIDA) and is a faculty member in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). He is currently on sabbatical leave from UMD and is a visiting professor at the University of Toronto. He has previously authored or edited 18 books and published over 200 refereed articles in journals, conference proceedings, edited books, and magazines, related to human-computer interaction, user-centered design, accessibility, policy, and law. He has received research funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Institute on Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), Google, and Adobe. He is the recipient of the 2024 IAAP Accessibility Initiatives Award, the 2020 ACM SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility, and the 2016 ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award, is a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy, and served as the general chair of the 2021 ACM ASSETS conference.