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1. Designing for Tinkerability and Accessibility: Developing the OctoStudio mobile app to engage blind and visually impaired learners in creating with code

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3628516.3659411  

   Bulovic, Katarina; Bentley, Zoë; Rusk, Natalie (June 2024, ACM)

   Millions of children around the world learn to code by creating with Scratch and other block-based programming languages. However, these programming environments typically are not accessible for blind and visually impaired children to tinker, create, and learn alongside their sighted peers. This paper discusses the ongoing development of the OctoStudio coding app to support accessibility and tinkerability for blind and visually impaired learners. We discuss how we have applied core principles of tinkerability to create an accessible, mainstream app for use on mobile phones and tablets. We describe our iterative development process in collaboration with educators who specialize in the design and testing of accessible technologies for children. We conclude with suggestions for how the core principles of designing for tinkerability can be expanded to support accessibility and engagement of blind and visually impaired learners internationally. 

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2. Computer Science Principles for Teachers of Blind and Visually Impaired Students

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287453  

   Stefik, Andreas; Ladner, Richard E.; Allee, William; Mealin, Sean (January 2019, Proceedings Article published 2019 in Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE '19)

   The College Board's AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) content has become a major new course for introducing K-12 students to the discipline. The course was designed for many reasons, but one major goal was to broaden participation. While significant work has been completed toward equity by many research groups, we know of no systematic analysis of CSP content created by major vendors in relation to accessibility for students with disabilities, especially those who are blind or visually impaired. In this experience report, we discuss two major actions by our team to make CSP more accessible. First, with the help of accessibility experts and teachers, we modified the entire Code.org CSP course to make it accessible. Second, we conducted a one-week professional development workshop in the summer of 2018 for teachers of blind or visually impaired students in order to help them prepare to teach CSP or support those who do. We report here on lessons learned that are useful to teachers who have blind or visually impaired students in their classes, to AP CSP curriculum providers, and to the College Board. 

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3. Bonk: accessible programming for accessible audio games

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3202185.3202754  

   Kane, Shaun K.; Koushik, Varsha; Muehlbradt, Annika (January 2018, IDC '18 Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children)

   Introductory computer programming presents a number of challenges for blind and visually impaired screen reader users. In addition to the challenges of navigating complex code documents using a screen reader, novice programmers who are blind are often unable to experience fun coding projects such as programming games or animations. To address these accessibility barriers, we developed Bonk, an accessible programming environment that enables the creation of interactive audio games using a subset of the JavaScript programming language. Bonk enables novice programmers to create, share, play, and remix accessible audio games. In this paper, we introduce the Bonk programming toolkit and describe its use in a week-long programming workshop with blind and visually impaired high school students. Students in the workshop were able to create and share original audio games using Bonk, and expressed enthusiasm about furthering their programming knowledge. 

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4. StoryBlocks: A Tangible Programming Game To Create Accessible Audio Stories

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300722  

   Koushik, Varsha; Guinness, Darren; Kane, Shaun K. (January 2019, Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2019))

   Block-based programming languages can support novice programmers through features such as simplified code syntax and user-friendly libraries. However, most block-based programming languages are highly visual, which makes them inaccessible to blind and visually impaired students. To address the inaccessibility of block-based languages, we introduce StoryBlocks, a tangible block-based game that enables blind programmers to learn basic programming concepts by creating audio stories. In this paper, we document the design of StoryBlocks and report on a series of design activities with groups of teachers, Braille experts, and students. Participants in our design sessions worked together to create accessible stories, and their feedback offers insights for the future development of accessible, tangible programming tools. 

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5. Blocks4All: Overcoming Accessibility Barriers to Blocks Programming for Children with Visual Impairments

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173643  

   Milne, Lauren R.; Ladner, Richard E. (April 2018, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)

   Blocks-based programming environments are a popular tool to teach children to program, but they rely heavily on visual metaphors and are therefore not fully accessible for children with visual impairments. We evaluated existing blocks-based environments and identified five major accessibility barriers for visually impaired users. We explored techniques to overcome these barriers in an interview with a teacher of the visually impaired and formative studies on a touchscreen blocks-based environment with five children with visual impairments. We distill our findings on usable touchscreen interactions into guidelines for designers of blocks-based environments. 

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