Accessible Interfaces
By James Kerrane
This article is written by researchers at Georgia Tech's Animal-Computer Interaction Lab, which "explore[s] the emerging area of Animal-Computer Interaction focusing on interfaces for inter-species communication and on the design and evaluation of interactive technology for users of multiple species" (Byrne et al.). In a computing context, exploring animal-computer interactions in addition to human-computer interaction can push the boundary on what is possible with inter-species interaction and collaboration.
In this paper, researchers explore the use of smart toys to assess the suitability of dogs for service dog work. This is a significant area of research because service dogs are very time consuming and expensive to train. According to the paper, around 60% of dogs can fail due to behavioral issues, so a rigorous, accurate, and early diagnostic can save the organizations that train service dogs millions of dollars.
To create an accurate diagnostic that is easy to administer, the paper explores creating "smart" toys that collect data as a dog interacts with them. The researchers created a chew toy ball that can approximate bite force, duration, time, and other variables that is provided to a predictive model. This model can then predict the service dog's outcome after training.
In software, a library is a collection of resources that a programmer can use to implement software (Rouse). For example, a library exists in many programming lanugages to help a programmer print text to the screen. When a software programmer utilizes the library, development can be made simpler because the programmer does not need to implement the code required to write text to the screen. Programmers can use libraries to reuse code for functions that they want to utilize often and to help simplify implementation of a feature to only need to be built once.
React is a library that helps web developers build user interfaces (the elements that make up popular apps, webpages, and dashboards that people use everyday). In a survey of professional devlopers in 2024 performed by StackOverflow, 41.6% of professional developers have done extensive development work with React in the past year, and wish to continue to work in React in 2025.
Thumbnail, LikeButton,
and Video component. These combine together to built an entire user interface (TODO)
When building a webpage, a traditional approach is writing the source code that will render the output that you want. This website was built with this traditional approach, with markup written in HTML and CSS that tells the browser from the top of the website to the bottom what to render. When building a website with React, you instead build components–tiny pieces of the website that you then fit together like a puzzle to define what the user interface should look like.
In computer programming, an algorithm is "a set of instructions that is designed to accomplish a task (“Algorithm”). Writing an algorithm is how computer programmers tell computers how to solve problems. For example, what if you wanted to write a program that could tell you if a number is even or odd? You could write an algorithm that checks if the number is divisible by 2, then it is even, otherwise it is odd.
Often, writing a precise algorithm for a task can be very hard. The task of making a peanut butter sandwhich is easily understood with verbal instructions, but if you wrote out a step by step list of the steps necessary to make a peanut butter sandwich there is a lot that can go wrong.
Another challenge can be writing an efficient algorithm. An efficient algorithm is one that can solve a problem quickly and with as few resources (time/processing) as possible. This is a problem that computer scientists, programmers, and even mathematicians work on!
Localization is a term in software development and other creative fields which, according to Merriam Webster, means "to make local". When releasing a software project like a video game for a global audience, there may be some elements of the source material that requires modification for the project to be understood across cultural barriers. If software is designed for a language that is written from left to right, the user interface might need to be adapted to support languages that are written from right to left.
هذه الفقرة باللغة العربية ، لذا يجب الانتقال من اليمين إلى اليسار.
This paragraph is in Arabic, so you must move from right to left.
Jokes that rely on specific cultural knowledge or language features like puns may need to be rewritten to make sense in a target language. For example, in the game Purrgatory, originally written in American English, a reference is made to the popular American cereal Froot Loops. When the game was translated to European Spanish for a spanish audience, the reference to Froot Loops was changed to white chocolate, a more universal reference (Torre Galán).
| Original text | Localized text | English translation of localized text |
|---|---|---|
| did you know all froot loops are the same flavor? | ¿sabías que el chocolate blanco no es chocolate en realidad? | did you know that white chocolate isn't actually chocolate? |
Localization ultimately creates a derivative work, so there is not one correct style or way to localize a piece of software.
Many pieces of software are developed in an open-source model, where the source code of the software is shared with other developers. This helps make software more secure, as the code can be reviewed by many people. Often, contributors can suggest features or fix bugs in the software, and the original developers can review and merge the changes into the software.
Tools like git keep track of software changes among multiple people, like a document revision history. This fascilitates the review and merging of code together from different contributors. Online code sharing platforms like GitHub, GitLab, SourceForge, and others use these source control tools to allow developers from all over the world to collaborate and release their software.
Open-source software is a different methodology to closed-source software, which is software that is not released to the public. This can lead to an imbalance of power between software vendors and users where users must trust the software vendor not to do anything malicious in their code, like embedding malware or tracking technologies. However, closed-source development allows proprietary technologies and intellectual property to be protected.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit organization that promotes digital privacy, free speech, and innovation through internet activism. They were founded in 1990 with the mission to "ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world." (“About EFF”)
They engage in political activism through litigation, like defending the Internet Archive against a lawsuit threatening its Controlled Digital Lending program. They also defeated a patent on podcasting, which would have given one company control over the entire podcasting industry. Their activism in the courtroom has protected the internet and the people who use the internet from unfair industry practices, predatory privacy harms, and freedom of speech challenges.
As a technology-centered nonprofit, EFF also takes an important role in developing tools to spread awareness and prevent threats to online privacy and security. They built Privacy Badger, a browser extension that blocks invisible trackers.