Final Project Proposal

Last revised date: 9/17/25

Overview

Propose a project to make the world slightly more accessible in a way that reflects a deep understanding of the needs and goals of disabled people. The goal of your project is to build an accessibility technology or make an existing technology more accessible.

Required Competencies

When you turn in this homework, also turn in these competencies

Optional Competencies

Optionally, you may want to turn in these competences as well:

Assignment Details

Table of Contents

  1. Final Project Examples From Past Courses
  2. Group Formation
  3. Assignment Requirements
    1. 0. Brainstorm an Idea
    2. 1. Develop an Argument for The Idea
    3. 2. Write About Your Proposal
  4. Assessment & Handin Process
    1. Turn in your writeup

The goal of your final project is to build an accessibility technology or make an existing technology more accessible, in a group of 2-4 students. In this phase of the final project, you will propose a specific project idea that you come up with.

Your idea should offer develop technology that will help to advance the needs of people with disabilities. However, we want to avoid creating Disability Dongles. To avoid this, we do two important things

  1. You should inform your project from a first person account. If you cannot find first person commentary on the topic, please reach out to the course staff for help. We may tell you not to worry about it, or point you at resources such as research papers that have interviews of people with disabilities in them.
  2. You should embody Positive Disability Principles: We understand that you cannot necessarily address all of the positive disability principles that we discuss in class, but at the very least you should be able to argue for principles 1 and 4: (1) It is not ableist (4) It furthers disabled agency and control. Ideally, you will also be able to address at least one more principle of the five specified in the competency.

Note on disability involvement in this project: It is not feasible to do a full iterative design cycle in this project (and not necessarily an ethical use of the time of people with disabilities). Please reach out to us for permission if you intend to work with disabled participants. Otherwise we will expect you to base your project on first person accounts you find online.

Final Project Examples From Past Courses

Some examples of what people have done in the past include:

  • Alti Discord Bot. Alti is a Discord bot that automatically generates alt text for any image that gets uploaded onto Discord. Once you add Alti to your Discord server, Alti will automatically generate alt text for the image using artificial intelligence (AI). Demo
  • Complexion Cupid: Color Matching Foundation Program. Allows individuals with color blindness to upload an image of their skin, and provides a makeup foundation match. Additionally, individuals can upload existing swatches and will be provided with filtered photos that better show the matching accuracy. Source
  • Twitter Content Warnings. A chrome extension meant to be used in conjunction with twitter.com in order to help people with PTSD
  • Lite Lingo: Plain Text Translator. A plain text translator to help individuals with learning disabilities. Demo and Source
  • Matplotalt: Alt text for matplotlib figures. A small python package to generate and surface alt text for matplotlib figures and improving chart accessibility
  • PadMap: Accessible Map for Menstrual Products Our goal is to ensure that anywhere on campus, people can search up the closest free menstrual products to them and get there in an accessible way. Source
  • SpeechIT. A presentation speech checker to ensure a user’s verbal speech during presentation is accessible and understandable for everyone.
  • Make Arduino programming more accessible by visualizing output from its sensors accessible and creating tactile schematics for circuits
  • Qbit: An Accessible Tangible User Interface for Window Management and Multitasking: Screen reader users who are blind use built-in mechanisms (e.g. alt+tab) to switch between windows. This requires them to remember the ordering of windows in these tab switchers and linearizes the switching process. Sighted computer users, on the other hand, use a variety of strategies like positioning windows and tabs within and across screens. We address this gap through an exploratory Tangible User Interface (TUI) – a physical cube – and report results from an exploratory pilot with one participant. Our preliminary findings show that rotating the cube is an intuitive way to navigate between windows and tabs, the cube’s verbal feedback is helpful while switching windows, and user can distinguish different sides easily due to the textures on the cube.
  • Knitting4All: Fabricating Solutions to Knitting Accessibility Problems: We performed one (soon to be more) case study with a participant, pseudonym Magnolia, with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), which causes her tremors, pain in her hands, loss of movement in her right (dominant) hand, double vision, and short term memory loss. Using a combination of semi structured interviews and contextual inquiry, we met with our participant to get a sense of how they knit today, the issues they face, and their goals for what they would like to knit. Following, we utilized participatory design, dubbing our participant as the expert, and worked closely with the participant to create prototypes via 3D printing and software programming to help her knit more complex patterns with more comfort (now published as part of “Stitching Together the Experiences of Disabled Knitters”)
  • [Dis]placed: navigating third places and chronic illness: People experiencing chronic illness often are excluded from third places for relaxing and socializing outside of the workplace and home. Designs of public places often neglect important characteristics like: frequent seating, temperature control, and accessible restrooms. However, public places also provide healing elements like relaxation, socialization, and views of nature. Because of the lack of proper design of third places, people with chronic illness find it challenging to find third places that fit their accessible and therapeutic needs and preferences. This project explored whether an information service could be helpful for people navigating the experience of place and chronic illness, by showing which places have certain qualities (now published as part of “Navigating Illness, Finding Place: Enhancing the Experience of Place for People Living with Chronic Illness”

Group Formation

The final project is a group assignment and requires forming groups of 2-4 people who can all attend the same section. (You don’t necessarily need to be registered for the same section, but you must all be able to attend the same one.)

Groups must be finalized by Friday, 11/8. If you already know who you are working with, you can submit your proposal as a group, but proposals may be submitted individually if you are not part of a group yet.

To help with group formation, post a summary of your idea on Ed; you’ll have opportunities to talk with other students in your section and browse their idea summaries so that you can find people who are interested in similar topics.

Assignment Requirements

To complete this assignment, you will need to do the following

0. Brainstorm an Idea

In choosing this project, you may want to draw from personal expertise, literature, or user data should you have access to it. Your idea should have the following components.

  • Implementation component: This project should require the creation of novel technology or resources involving programming.
  • Validation component: Your project also must include a validation component (some way of measuring how well it works). This typically involves developing a set of examples and metrics for success, and assessing how well the technology performs on them.

Note on disability involvement in this project It is not feasible to do a full iterative design cycle in this project (and not necessarily an ethical use of the time of people with disabilities). However if you want to include data from interviewing, or testing with, people with disabilities, that is permissible. That said, your project should not unduly burden the disability community. Some projects may allow for direct collaboration with or feedback from people with disabilities, others may not. Please reach out to us for guidance on this if you intend to work with disabled participants.

1. Develop an Argument for The Idea

Your idea should be

  • Promising It should offer novel research insights or technology that will help to advance the needs of people with disabilities
  • Informed by a First Person Account
  • Embody Positive Disability Principles, meaning it holds up under a Disability Model Analysis, is not ableist, and furthers disabled agency and control.
  • Feasible in the time available during the quarter.

2. Write About Your Proposal

Your write up should include the following information

  • Promise:
    • What new knowledge or capabilities does this project enable?
    • Why is this challenging today? What is already known about this, and what is not known? You should discuss related literature and/or products in answering this question.
  • What First Person Account are you drawing from? You must have one of the following
    • An existing ongoing project involving interviews or other engagements with people with disabilities that you can refer to
    • Find an existing interview paper or ethnography/auto-ethnography on the topic
    • Find an online content creator who provides a first person account of the need for this project
  • Feasible in the time available during the quarter.
    • What do you plan to accomplish by each of the two intermediate project milestones (week 7 and 10), and by the end of the quarter (week 12)?
    • What will you omit in order to make the project feasible? In other words, how will you scope this project to fit within the quarter? Given the number of weeks available (7), be careful not to over commit.

Assessment & Handin Process

Turn in your writeup

Disability Model Analysis (rubric)

  • Tell us which video you want to be assessed (from the class videos including discussion leads; and AT around us presentations)
  • Timestamps for places in the video where any of the following best practices are demonstrated.
    • Introduce and describe yourself
    • Verbally describe images and videos so that someone who cannot see the screen can understand them
    • Repeat questions for clarity and member checking (even if on zoom)
  • Note that your presentation must have positive examples of at least seven of the ten best practices to be assessed as excellent on this competency.

Finding First Person Accounts (rubric)

  • Tell us which video you want to be assessed (from the class videos including discussion leads; and AT around us presentations)
  • Timestamps for places in the video where any of the following best practices are demonstrated.
    • Introduce and describe yourself
    • Verbally describe images and videos so that someone who cannot see the screen can understand them
    • Repeat questions for clarity and member checking (even if on zoom)
  • Note that your presentation must have positive examples of at least seven of the ten best practices to be assessed as excellent on this competency.

Optional Information to hand in

In addition, you may choose to hand in the following optional information. Please ask the instructors if you're unsure what additional work or materials might be needed to complete these.

Accessible Documents (rubric)

  • Tell us which video you want to be assessed (from the class videos including discussion leads; and AT around us presentations)
  • Timestamps for places in the video where any of the following best practices are demonstrated.
    • Introduce and describe yourself
    • Verbally describe images and videos so that someone who cannot see the screen can understand them
    • Repeat questions for clarity and member checking (even if on zoom)
  • Note that your presentation must have positive examples of at least seven of the ten best practices to be assessed as excellent on this competency.

Plain Language (rubric)

  • Tell us which video you want to be assessed (from the class videos including discussion leads; and AT around us presentations)
  • Timestamps for places in the video where any of the following best practices are demonstrated.
    • Introduce and describe yourself
    • Verbally describe images and videos so that someone who cannot see the screen can understand them
    • Repeat questions for clarity and member checking (even if on zoom)
  • Note that your presentation must have positive examples of at least seven of the ten best practices to be assessed as excellent on this competency.

Back to top

The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations. This site is maintained by J. Mankoff.