CMPE 80A: Universal Access: Disability, Technology, And Society

What Is The Course About?

This course presents an overview of human-centered technology and of its potential for increasing the quality of life and independence of individuals with disabilities. A substantial portion of the course is devoted to studying physical, psychological, and psychosocial aspects of disability. Topics include: diversity and integration, legislation, accessibility, and universal design.

Logistics

When And Where?

Thimann Lecture Hall 3, Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:30-3:05 PM

Who To Contact?

Sri Kurniawan: Instructor
TA: Fatemeh Mirzaei (office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:35-12:35) and Sean-Ryan Smith (office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 3-4 PM) at Engineering 2, room 309.

Email: ce80a.spring17@gmail.com

Course Arrangement: The Course Is Set Up As Follows:

  1. A theoretical lecture on a certain disability or special situation, either by the instructor or a guest lecturer.
  2. A lecture or demonstration of technologies that can mediate the effects of the special needs presented previously, either by the instructor or a guest lecturer.
  3. Doing some assignments or watching videos. Videos will be taken from freely available sites such as youtube or ted), mostly on inspiring "guest lecturers". See an example of a youtube video that will be used in the class to get a feel: Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke story.

Tentative Course Schedule

W1: The disabled community. Diversity and integration: history, social perception, role models. Legislation and the Americans with Disability Act.

W2: Physiology and psychology of disability: visual, hearing, mobility, cognitive.

W3: Physiology and psychology of disability (cont'd). Old age and disability.

W4: Home and urban environments for all types of abilities. Principles of Universal Design.

W5: Assistive Technology for independent living: mobility, orientation, access to written information.

W6: Assistive Technology for interpersonal communication. Principles of Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

W7: Universal computer access. Multi-modal and extra-ordinary human-machine interaction.

W8: Assistive Technology in the playground, at school, and in the workplace.

W9: Testing accessibility and assessing acceptance and outcomes. 

W10: The economics of AT. The interplay of mainstream and AT technology development. Case studies from the industry.

Assessments

  1. Attendance: 20% - this will be in the form of pop quizzes at random times. There is no pre-set number of quizzes and I do not accept any reason for missing the class, but I will drop the lowest grade (so essentially you can skip one pop quiz).
  2. Homework: 80% - there will be 8 homework @ 10%. I do not accept any late submission for any reason. Homework is due on Friday at 5 PM Californian time through a Google Form submission (our timestamp). The homework requires you to summarize the following. For each of these, I need a web link, and a 100-150 words summary. You must rewrite the summary, not take it from a snippet, a video description, or an abstract. We run plagiarism detection software, and if the software detects 50% similarity to the original source (or with another submission), we will consider it plagiarized. 
  • A journal/conference paper (3%). The paper must be at least 5 pages long in that conference/journal format. 
  • A magazine/newspaper article (3%). The article must be at least 3000 words.
  • A movie that is not the one I assigned already (3%). The movie must be at least 20 minutes long and was produced by an organization/institution, not an individual.
  • A piece of assistive technology to help mediate a disability/condition (1%). Talk about how it works, how much it costs (or if it is still an experimental/research product), etc.

You can replace one homework (either because of late submission, which will be considered a zero) or poor grade, with 5 hours volunteering at organizations working with people with disabilities. We do not provide any introduction, but I am happy to write a letter to say that this volunteering work is a part of the course if the contact person requires so. You will need to submit evidence of voluntary work through a letterheaded letter or an email from the contact person of that organization describing how many hours you volunteered and what you did. Please note that the organization must have a physical address and a contact person I can call. 

Policies And Accommodation

  • All students enrolling in this class are advised that Academic Integrity will be strictly enforced. Academic misconduct includes but is not limited to cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, or facilitating academic dishonesty or as further specified in campus regulations.
  • If you qualify for classroom accommodations because of a disability, please submit your Accommodation Authorization from the Disability Resource Center (DRC) to me in a timely manner, preferably within the first two weeks of the quarter. Contact DRC at 459-2089 V, 459-4806 TTY.