Source: NFB

Research Participation Request: Study to Evaluate Tool to Help Blind Developers

The below research participant solicitation is being provided for informational purposes only. The National Federation of the Blind has no involvement in this research, but we believe that it may contribute to our research mission.

Research Title: Study to Evaluate Tool to Help Blind Developers

Being conducted by: University of Mary Washington

Purpose of the Study

Literature suggests that BLV developers prefer to use Notepad and command line for programming purposes (over sophisticated software). We built a tool to help them identify errors in their code.  The purpose of the study is to: (1) observe challenges that participants face when writing code, and (2) observe participants’ use of our tool, in conjunction with their development environment, and understand if, through our tool, they are better able to find errors in their code and, as a result, find it easier to code.  The major motivation of our study is to remove the barriers faced by prospective and current developers, and to provide them the necessary support to help them gain expertise in programming, computer science, and/or data science.

Role of the Participants and Anticipated Length of the Study

In the study, participants will complete a set of Python activities developed by the POGIL community to teach CS1. I will modify the content of the activity to introduce some errors. The participants will use Notepad to write the code and Windows/Linux Terminal to execute their code. They will run a shell script that we built that provides a summary of the error. We will record the session using screen capture grab. Participants will complete a pre-study survey that captures their current development workflow, their programming expertise, and their current tool stack. They will also complete a post-study survey that requests responses on their self-perceived success in completing the tasks. Success will be broken down to sub-categories like ease of use, success in correcting code, etc. From the recording, we will quantitatively measure the time it took for students in the control and test group to identify sources of errors and time to fix them.

The observation should take 1 hour. The post-study interview should be 30-minutes to 1 hour as well.

Proposed Participant Compensation

$25 per gift card (for study 1)

Increased to $35 (for study 2 for those who did study 1 as well)

Link or Instructions for Participants to Enter the Study

If interested, please send me an email at pchandra@umw.edu.

In your email please list the following:

(1) What is your previous experience with writing code/software in practice? (Check the

bottom-most item that applies.)

__ I have never written code.

__ I have written code on my own.

__ I have written code as a part of a team, as part of a course.

__ I have written code as a part of a team, in industry one time.

__ I have worked on multiple code-related projects in industry.

(2) Do you have programming experience in Python (Yes/No)

(3) What OS do you use? (Mac/Windows/Linux-based)

(4) Please list current tools in your development environment.

Contact the following individual with any questions

Prashant Chandrasekar

5409987654

pchandra@umw.edu