Jacob Wobbrock honored with SIGCHI Social Impact Award

Jacob Wobbrock, an associate professor at the Information School at the University of Washington and AccessComputing Co-PI, was awarded the 2017 SIGCHI Social Impact Award for his work in creating and studying technologies for people with disabilities. SIGCHI is the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, and they give this award annually to individuals who promote the application of human-computer interaction research to pressing social needs.

Wobbrock was recognized for many research accomplishments, including his work with technologies for people with disabilities.  He is also well known for his advocacy of “Ability-Based Design,” for computer systems whereby the system adapts to the user's abilities, either automatically or by user-selected options, to make the system accessible and usable.  Wobbrock continues to work on making computing more accessible and usable for people with disabilities.