Emily Maria Giurleo

Emily Maria Giurleo

Scholar Title

MIT EECS Undergraduate Research and Innovation Scholar

Research Title

Keyboard Accessibility in Block-Based Coding Environments

Cohort

2016–2017

Department

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Research Areas
  • Systems and Networking
Supervisor

Harold Abelson

Abstract

App Inventor is a website that allows users to make their own Android apps using a block-based coding language. While App Inventor has almost 3 million users it contains few accessibility features. In particular there is no way for a user to navigate the block workspace on the App Inventor site without using their mouse; this poses a significant problem for users who use screen readers or who cannot operate a mouse. I will design and implement a set of keyboard shortcuts that allow users to operate the App Inventor website in a way that is intuitive and customizable and evaluate my solution by conducting user tests.

Quote

I’m participating in the SuperUROP program because I want the experience of organizing and participating in a more long-term project. In my experience I’ve learned much more about software engineering by undertaking projects or working on an existing code base and I want to continue to gain experiences like these in my last year of MIT.

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