Understanding how to design and implement equity-based approaches to technology-rich learning in community settings can lead to increased and diversified participation in computing. However, research has shown that making practices can be inequitable, particularly for populations who are situated in low-resourced settings. In US cities, recreation centers have been shown to be promising sites for equity-based hands-on maker learning. However, it is unclear what approaches are needed to create the necessary technical and social infrastructure at these sites to support community uptake. Our study investigates the infrastructure development process for an equity-based makerspace program as developed within city-run community recreation centers in two US cities over 3 years. We developed an infrastructure map depicting the ecosystem of multiple organizations that are involved in creating the program and identified how digital technologies within makerspaces function as sociocultural factors within this ecosystem.

ASSETS '25: The 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, Denver Colorado USA, October 26 - 29, 2025

Blind and low-vision (BLV) university students often encounter campus accessibility challenges that impede their ability to navigate campus environments effectively. The lack of customization offered by some navigational-focused assistive technologies (ATs) often falls short in addressing their diverse and specific navigational needs. 3D printing, a promising tool for creating affordable and personalized aids, has been explored as a method to create customized tactile maps to aid BLV individuals with general navigation. However, the use of 3D-printed tactile maps by BLV university students and the impact of their direct involvement in the design process remain largely unexplored. We employed a participatory design (PD) approach to engage BLV students from a university in the United States (U.S.) through semi-structured interviews and a co-design session to create a prototype 3D-printed tactile map. Additionally, we consulted with a blind rehabilitation and independence expert for insight into their perspective on AT and, more specifically, tactile maps and showed the prototype to a group of visually impaired youth and instructors visiting our university for feedback. We present and discuss our findings, provide an overview of the prototype design process, and outline future work.

While Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approaches to producing customized assistive technology (AT) have been shown to support end-user agency and further technology democratization, research has shown that the utilization of digital fabrication tools requires a high level of technical expertise as well as financial investment. Facilitation of collaborations between end users and makers is a possible solution to these issues, however, previous efforts have uncovered issues around shared language, lack of consistent communication, and liability concerns. A promising direction for addressing these issues is to conceive of new types of multi-organizational collaborations that draw on complementary strengths. We explored these possibilities through an Action Research study in which we collaborated with the Maryland department of disability to launch a state level DIY-AT program. Through developing and supporting this program, we studied motivations for participation, relationships to creating and customizing AT, how individuals participated in and grew the program, and how the program allowed for individuals to reflect on their disabilities and AT use. Our findings generated an ecosystem model describing the interdependent relationships between and roles held by each stakeholder in the state DIY-AT program as well as a description of how this ecosystem encouraged expanding and transcending the understandings and definitions of AT and disability. We offer lessons learned for the design of future government-supported DIY-AT programs and reflections on the role of HCI researchers within these ecosystems.

As exploration of living media, biology, and biotechnology advances HCI, researchers call attention to implications for ethics. We respond with a qualitative study of audience engagement with multimedia bioart installation. Bioart comprises a transdisciplinary practice that brings diverse perspectives in art, science, and technology into dialogue and engages audiences. Understanding a bioart exemplar, Raaz, as disrupting habitual modes of being, we investigate audience experiences in three contexts, elaborating transdisciplinary community engagement that takes seriously living media and biotechnology and informs HCI broadly through vital authenticity, performative reflection, empowered critique, distributed expertise, and revealed dynamics. We discuss how transdisciplinary community engagement functions as a mode of inquiry and design that supports inclusive liminal experiences.

Digital fabrication methods offer exciting opportunities for producing customized assistive technology (AT). However, utilizing these tools currently requires a high level of technical expertise as well as time and money investments. Furthermore, facilitating collaboration between end users and makers needs effective and inclusive approaches with shared language and support for asynchronous, dispersed communication of design requirements. While these Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approaches are shown to support end-user agency and furthering technology democratization, research has to yet explore how they can further align with social justice values and practices. We explored these possibilities by facilitating DIY-AT design with students with disabilities within a university makerspace. By explicitly encouraging participants to consider social justice issues important to them as they engaged in DIY-AT design, we studied the considerations and supports needed for facilitating flexible co-design activities and broader conversations about accessibility barriers at the university. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, we offer lessons learned about the potential of co-designing DIY-ATs as a way to investigate questions of social justice, inclusion, and access in academic contexts.

Understanding how to design and implement equity-based approaches to technology-rich learning can lead to increased and diversified participation in computing. Do-it-yourself (DIY) and maker approaches to interactive technology learning have been hailed as potential equalizers of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for underserved youth, a narrative challenged by scholarship that has shown that if not designed carefully, making can be exclusionary and hegemonic. Equity-based approaches to making have identified the crucial role of community educators to prioritize community assets and learner participation. We studied educators’ strategies and youth outcomes in four afterschool maker programs in urban recreation centers. Community educators used several equity-based strategies to engage youth that included: identifying their interests through direct conversation and indirect signaling, customizing program activities to respond to interests, and encouraging self-expression and authenticity. These strategies led to increased social connections among youth, and increased technology self-efficacy and project ownership.

Digital fabrication methods have been shown to be an effective method for producing customized assistive technology (AT). However, the skills required to utilize these tools currently require a high level of technical skill. Previous research showed that integration of these skills within physical therapy training is appropriate but that the level of technical difficulty required can be an issue. We worked to address these issues by introducing a group of PT students to maker concepts and having them develop custom AT for real end users with the help of makers. We present three considerations when integrating making into PT curriculum: 1) including all stakeholders, 2) developing interdisciplinary competencies for PTs and makers, and 3) leveraging academic training programs to connect makers and PT students. In this paper, we contribute to knowledge on how to facilitate the 3D printing of customized ATs for PT students by connecting them with a community organization that provides digital fabrication services and technical expertise. By connecting multiple stakeholders (i.e., PT students, digital fabricators, and AT users), we offer an approach to overcome time and capacity constraints of PT students to utilize advanced fabrication technologies to create customized ATs through connecting them to professional makers.

Scaling limitations of conventional and emerging memories has provided the impetus for the increased focus on reliability techniques to overcome associated physical limitations of non-perfect devices. However, despite these reliability advances, critical challenges remain to be solved as new memory types and memory vulnerabilities arise. There continues to be no simulator with extended reliability models for easy comparison of existing and newly developed techniques nor simple integration of innovative new reliability concepts and failure modes. The mission of our simulator, PremSim, is to provide a framework which solves these fundamental limitations. While PremSim can function using memory traces, it was also designed from the ground-up to be fully integrated with several external simulators including the Structural Simulation Toolkit (SST) as a memory backend. It can connect to other detailed memory backends such as DRAMSim2 for detailed energy and timing. Further, it provides modes which give estimated lifetime for endurance-limited memories, as well as the provable correction capability per row for a given fault distribution. To perform these calculations in a reasonable time window and to remain compatible with abstract full-system simulators, we also provide and verify novel abstractions. Additionally, we show case studies of how different fault mitigation strategies can be modeled effectively in PremSim including solutions at the page, row, word, and bit-level granularity of next-generation traditional and emerging faulty memories.