A Research Lab at University of Michigan, CSE
The Accessibility Lab was founded in 2022 by Professor Dhruv Jain and his students. Our long-term vision is to make the world accesssible for everyone, everywhere. We believe in this vision because accessibilty affects everyone, not just people with disabilities. All of us find conversations difficult to hear in noisy bars, doorbells inaudible over a vacuum cleaner running, or may miss a phone ringing on a train. In future, we believe that every information and technology will be accessible by default.
Our current focus is on "sound". We are studying systems that deliver sound information in alternative ways—using visual or haptic feedback or through enhanced audio. A key aspect of our research is the focus on the user—we follow a thorough design process to understand our users' concerns, build technology systems to address those concerns, and deploy and study our systems with the users in their natural environments. We publish research work in the most prestigious human-computer interaction venues such as CHI, UIST, and ASSETS; seven of our past publications have been honored with awards. We also especially care about deployment: our systems have been publicly launched (e.g., one has over 100,000 users) and have received attention from industries such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple.
