My research examines accessibility barriers experienced by people who are blind or visually impaired through various approaches, including qualitative, data-driven, and ethnographic studies. I contribute datasets and improvements to real-world systems to enhance accessibility. For example, my work, now integrated into Microsoft's VS Code LiveShare, has made collaborative programming activities between blind or visually impaired (BVI) and sighted developers accessible. Similarly, I have contributed to a data-driven understanding of the accessibility of computational notebooks—tools widely used in disciplines such as data science, artificial intelligence, and astronomy. 

I am recruiting PhD students in the upcoming cycle and would love to work with current UM undergraduate and master's students. I am particularly excited about exploring the impact of rapidly adopted technologies, such as generative AI, on people with disabilities, and I am committed to developing real-world solutions that increase accessibility throughout both the development lifecycle and the use of these technologies. For example, I plan to develop a plug-and-play camera-based platform for blind or visually impaired power users to evaluate the utility of different text-to-image models in meeting their unique visual description needs. 

If this interests you, or if you have other ideas to make the world more accessible, please reach out to me via email.

Pronouns

He/him/his

Areas of interest

Accessibility, Human Computer Interaction, Developer tools, Artificial Intelligence

Honors & Awards

Apple Scholar, Google Lime Scholar

Education

PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at University of Washington