Accessibility advocate

On May 3, Stacy Branham helped host a landmark outreach event to support visually impaired high school students in Orange County. With 58 participants attending in person and 18 online, the gathering brought together a diverse group, including 12 blind and low-vision high school students; seven UC Irvine affiliates; 18 teachers of the visually impaired; and numerous UC Irvine faculty, staff and student allies.

The event, which drew attendees from school districts in Irvine, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos and Garden Grove, was a resounding success, reflecting Branham’s ongoing commitment to accessibility and inclusion.

The UC Irvine associate professor of informatics’ journey began in a challenging university environment for women in computer science. “When I walked into my first computer science classroom, I looked around the room, and it was a sea of men. I felt like I didn’t belong,” Branham says.

Despite the odds, she got a bachelor’s degree in 2007 at Virginia Tech, where only 4.2 percent of graduates in computer science were women. Initially skeptical of women’s computing groups, Branham eventually became an advocate for gender equality in the field.

After earning a Ph.D. in computer science at Virginia Tech, she pursued a postdoctoral position at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. There, Branham worked under Shaun Kane, who developed a screen reader for touch-screen phones, revolutionizing accessibility for blind users.

“In 2010, with the first all-touch-screen phone, there was nothing for blind people to access,” she says. “What he did was come up with the idea of making gestures on the screen.” This experience profoundly influenced her career direction.

Branham’s background as a military brat – moving frequently across Louisiana, Virginia, Indiana and Massachusetts – instilled in her a resilience and adaptability that would serve her well in academia. After her postdoc year, she became a lecturer at UMBC, teaching an introductory computer science class that emphasized accessibility for diverse students. In addition, Branham directed her own research lab at UMBC, which she called the Inclusive Studio for Innovative Technology and Education. In 2018, she joined UC Irvine as an assistant professor.

“Over the past six years, I have employed students with a wide range of gender and disability identities, including several blind students,” Branham says. “My students and I co-created our values statement, which includes as a foundational tenet that we cannot build inclusive technologies without first building an inclusive research and design team.”

Her commitment to inclusion also led her to become involved with a National Science Foundation-funded effort called AccessComputing, which is aimed at ensuring that people with disabilities can become computer scientists.

AccessComputing was founded about 15 years ago by Richard Ladner, now a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, and other computer scientists. When Ladner was nearing the end of his career, he decided to recruit three emerging leaders in the computing accessibility field, including Branham, as co-principal investigators on the grant.

“It’s an honor to be able to carry on the work of AccessComputing and pay it forward,” she says. “Someday, the students we currently support will go on to become leaders themselves, mentoring the next generation of computing professionals.”

Branham’s dedication to service is evident in her work with the Dayle McIntosh Center, an Orange County-based nonprofit that helps people with disabilities live independently. During the COVID-19 crisis, Branham developed a program to provide 200,000 minutes of free access to Aira, a service that connects blind users with remote sighted assistants.

“They couldn’t see all the signage about where to stand, etc., during the pandemic. We asked the center if there was anything we could do,” she says.

Branham has also designed her own digitally accessible technology, including Jaime, a voice assistant that answers questions for blind people as they navigate complex indoor spaces like airports (responding to prompts such as “Notify me when I pass a men’s restroom” and “What’s my gate?”), and ReadWithUs, an Alexa app that allows blind parents to read picture books with their children.

Beyond her research and teaching, she co-founded an organization for disabled faculty and staff and led a task force for disability culture that will result in a dedicated center on campus. “We need our educational systems to be accessible,” Branham says.

The May 3 event was supported by the Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences’ Office of Outreach, Access & Inclusion; the Department of Informatics; the Office of Inclusive Excellence; the Disability Services Center; the University of Washington’s AccessComputing alliance; and teachers of the visually impaired from local school districts. This collaboration underscores the widespread commitment to the cause Branham champions.

Her work continues to evolve. In her research lab, Branham partners with four blind students to raise visibility of the barriers they face and develop novel technologies to address them.

“In teaching, one of the biggest crimes of computer science programs is that they produce software developers who don’t know anything about the lived experiences of people with disabilities,” Branham says. She is determined to change this, ensuring that her students are equipped to create accessible technologies.

Looking ahead, Branham plans to expand her outreach and advocacy efforts, emphasizing the importance of inclusive education and technology development. Her work at UC Irvine and beyond serves as a testament to the transformative power of dedication and empathy in making the world a more accessible place for everyone. If there’s one thing Branham hopes she can help the world understand, it’s how easy it can be to make digital technology more accessible.

“We all create and share digital artifacts every day, so it’s actually everyone’s responsibility to be aware of and practice digital accessibility,” she explains. “If you’ve ever made a PDF file, chances are you’ve made one that cannot be used by a blind screen reader user. If you’ve ever posted an image on social media or your webpage, chances are you’ve omitted meaningful alternative text for blind screen reader users. If you’ve ever posted a video to YouTube or played one in a presentation, chances are you’ve forgotten to add audio descriptions to verbalize important visual information for blind and low-vision audience members.”

Branham often reminds her students how simple it is to fix those habits. “For example, the next time you’re about to post a digital image, right-click on it and see if there’s a menu option for adding alternative text,” she suggests. “Do a quick Google search about how to write decent alternative text. Then read a little bit about how people with disabilities use technology. There’s a lot to learn, but start small and never stop being curious. This is how to be a good ally and do your part to make the world more equitable for people with disabilities.”

If you want to learn more about supporting this or other activities at UC Irvine, please visit the Brilliant Future website. By engaging 75,000 alumni and garnering $2 billion in philanthropic investment, UC Irvine seeks to reach new heights of excellence in student success, health and wellness, research and more. The Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences plays a vital role in the success of the campaign. Learn more by visiting https://brilliantfuture.uci.edu/donald-bren-school-of-ics.