Jacob Wobbrock · University of Washington
Back to Basics: Making Pointing Accessible

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Fundamental to the operation of any graphical user interface is the ability to successfully acquire targets on a screen. Despite years of research in computer access, studies show that most people who could benefit from access technologies do not use them, citing cost, complexity, configuration, and maintenance as reasons, especially for specialized hardware solutions. Over the last few years, my research group has explored cheap software-only solutions to making pointing more accessible for everyday input devices like mice, trackballs, and touchpads. In this talk, I will describe our efforts at rethinking how graphical targets can be acquired, from using goal crossing on the desktop, to building a suite of advanced area cursors, to using control-display gain based on movement angles, to automatically redesigning the underlying user interface to maximize a user's pointing performance. I will conclude by introducing ability-based design, our new design approach that focuses on a user's abilities throughout the design process to create systems that leverage the full range of human potential. Just as user-centered design shifted the focus of interactive system design from systems to users, ability-based design attempts to shift the focus of accessible design from disability to ability.

Jacob O. Wobbrock is an Assistant Professor in the Information School and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he directs the AIM Research Group comprising students from UW's information and computer science programs. His research combines computer science, interaction design, and social, cognitive & experimental psychology to investigate novel user interface technologies, input and interaction techniques, human performance with computing systems, and accessible, mobile & surface computing interfaces. He has won eight best paper awards, including five from ACM CHI, and is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award and three other NSF grants. He received his Ph.D. from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He also received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Symbolic Systems and Computer Science, respectively, from Stanford University.