Although CS programs are booming, introductory courses like CS1 still adopt a one-size-fits-all formats that can exacerbate cognitive load and discourage learners with autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other neurological conditions. These call for compassionate pedagogies and Universal Design For Learning (UDL) to create learning environments and materials where cognitive diversity is welcomed. To address this, we introduce DiverseClaire a pilot study, which simulates students including neurodiverse profiles using LLMs and diverse personas. By leveraging Bloom's Taxonomy and UDL, DiverseClaire compared UDL-transformed lecture slides with traditional formats. To evaluate DiverseClaire controlled experiments, we used the evaluation metric the average score. The findings revealed that the simulated neurodiverse students struggled with learning due to lecture slides that were in inaccessible formats. These results highlight the need to provide course materials in multiple formats for diverse learner preferences. Data from our pilot study will be made available to assist future CS1 instructors.

The kitchenware company's head engineer, Mack Mor, had dug through the archives to find some product prototypes to help me understand how OXO designs and develops gadgets. Now, sitting on a table in the employee break room, amid jury-rigged cherry pitters and spiralizers constructed from sawed-apart water bottles, was a large, baby blue Tiffany box, of the sort in which you might expect to see encased a sparkling wedding present. Mor opened the box--and revealed the company's very first salad spinner. OXO revolutionized the salad spinner, to be sure. But to see this humble prototype--Frankenstein'd out of a child's toy top and some hand-carved plastic, dull with age--swaddled inside a gorgeous Tiffany box made me laugh. OXO, with its embrace of dutiful, functional design and every-cook utility, certainly wasn't Tiffany. Maybe not, but don't tell that to the people who love OXO.

Higher education institutions share a goal of making learning more accessible to all students. To meet this goal many colleges and universities, including UMass Amherst, have adopted the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework in an effort to design curriculum to serve all learners, regardless of ability, disability, age, gender or background. Modern technologies often play a supporting role in UDL, providing students with multiple modalities such as video, audio, and text. While these technologies can make implementing UDL easier, they can also be costly. Beginning with the Fall 2018 term, an interdisciplinary team of academic technologists, instructional designers, and instructors at UMass Amherst started exploring how classroom video and Echo360's new automated speech recognition (ASR) technology can create a pathway to cost-effective, scalable captioning that can improve accessibility and support universal design.

Combating bias and creating more inclusive AI is unlikely to succeed unless developers include those people who have been historically excluded or ignored. Advances in automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) mean we're on the threshold of discoveries that could change human society irreversibly – for better or worse. From AI that sorts CVs and shortlists job applicants, to facial recognition algorithms, these technologies are bringing new efficiencies and reducing errors in both public and private sector decision making. But, increasingly, many of us are becoming aware of the dangers of bias and discrimination inherent in these technologies. A recent MIT study measuring how the technology works on people of different races and gender found that facial recognition AI was less accurate when classifying the faces of people with darker skin.

Advances in automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) mean we're on the threshold of discoveries that could change human society irreversibly – for better or worse. From AI that sorts CVs and shortlists job applicants, to facial recognition algorithms, these technologies are bringing new efficiencies and reducing errors in both public and private sector decision making. But, increasingly, many of us are becoming aware of the dangers of bias and discrimination inherent in these technologies. A recent MIT study measuring how the technology works on people of different races and gender found that facial recognition AI was less accurate when classifying the faces of people with darker skin. Meanwhile, Amazon scrapped an AI recruitment tool after the company found that it wasn't rating candidates for software developer jobs and other technical posts in a gender-neutral way.

Microsoft's mission to create technology that can empower every person doesn't just begin and end with the products it is creating. It extends to the people it hires, the standards it holds its partners and vendors to, and the workplace it has created. And the man at the top, CEO Satya Nadella, is personally inspired by all of it he said during a discussion at the company's Ability Summit in Redmond, Wash., on Thursday. "The consciousness of the place has changed, which is what's most exciting to me," Nadella said during the event aimed at showcasing accessible technology and the importance of inclusive design. "That's at least what leads to the start of all big things."

On one otherwise unremarkable day in May 2013, August de los Reyes fell out of bed and hurt his back. Forty-two years old at the time, he was just six months into his dream job at Microsoft: running design for Xbox and righting a franchise that was drifting due to mission creep. At first, de los Reyes was worried that the fall was serious; he went to the ER and was assured that he was fine. Yet several hospital trips later, he found himself undergoing emergency surgery. His spine had been fractured all along. His spinal cord had been damaged. With breathtaking quickness, he was unable to walk ever again. De los Reyes has the reassuring smile and steady calm of a high-school guidance counselor, and an almost-spiritual attachment to video games. He likes to tell people that the universe is play, and that we all have a moral imperative to play.