Skip navigation
SS12: Code for a Cause Banner

Our Sponsors

Project:Possibility Logo

Mozilla Foundation Logo

Knowbility Logo

Microsoft Logo

University Skateboards Logo

USC Engineering Graduate Student Association Logo

USC Graduate and Professional Student Senate Logo

USC Undergraduate Student Government Logo

USC International Students' Assembly Logo

Projects

An initial overview of the projects and the SS12 event can be see on the SS12 Orientation Presentation.

Project:Possibility Logo
SS12 Projects concepts were developed by Project:Possibility in collaboration with the disabled, assistive technology, and open source communities. Project:Possibility gives special thanks to Simon Bates, Charles Chen, and members of OATS for their assistance.

In addition to their respective day jobs, SS12 mentors are also members of Project:Possibility.

As specified, none of the proposed projects existed in the open source software community at the time of this code-a-thon. Several of these projects utilize cutting-edge accessible technology that was publicly released within less than three weeks of this code-a-thon. (See Google AxsJax and Dojo Toolkit.)

Projects have been divided in to Track A, Track B, and Exhibition projects. Track A projects are mentorship intensive, milestone-based projects. Track B projects are more open-ended and involve a stronger creativity/innovation factor. Exhibition projects are for participants that will be involved for less than the full amount (24 hours) of the coding challenge.

Track A Projects

Project 1: Mobile Currency Reader (View Project) (View Presentation)

  • Mentor: Marc Allen (NASA JPL)
  • Team: Avanthi Rajan, Kevin Milner, Ojas Mulay, Sudhindra Aithal, Tom Robinson
  • Summary: A software application capable of recognizing types of currency from digital images, with the intention of deploying this software to mobile devices.

Project 2: Word Prediction Software (View Project) (View Presentation)

  • Mentor: Michael Parker (Google)
  • Team: Ji Ma, Matthew Michihara, David Richardson, Nitin Bhatt
  • Summary: This software will allow users with limited mobility to be able to more accurately and quickly input text into a computer. This software is intelligent enough to offer suggestions for the user based on context and the characters inputted so far.

Project 3: Google AxsJax for Wikipedia (View Project) (View Presentation)

  • Mentor: Prashanth Pandian (Orbital Sciences)
  • Team: Gurmeet Singh, Arvind Venkataraman, Kushal Bhatt
  • Summary: Accessibility is rarely a first consideration in the design of most websites. Google AxsJax, announced in early November 2007, gives web developers an ability to "inject" standards compliant accessibility into web pages that are not initially accessible.

Track B Projects

Project 1: Dojo Toolkit (View Project) (View Presentation)

  • Mentor: Ryan Ollerenshaw (NASA JPL)
  • Team: Thomas Hauburger, Ryan Brown, David Hodge, Leslie Nguyen, Michael Hwang
  • Summary: The Dojo Toolkit is a Javascript web widget platform that supports standards compliant accessible widgets. The Dijit 1.0 widget toolkit builds on this framework. This software will utilize Dijit to create an innovative, accessible web application.

Project 2: Binary Input Video Game 0 (View Project) (View Presentation)

  • Mentors
  • Team: Henry Yuen, Candice Zimmerman, Prateek Tandon, Shivani Srivastava, Aadarsh Patel
  • Summary: Those with neuromuscular disabilities have limited interfaces to computers and devices, in some cases just a single button. Very few applications exist that support such an interface, especially video games. This video game will use binary control as an innovative interface.

Project 3: Binary Input Video Game 1 (View Project) (View Presentation)

  • Mentors
  • Team: Thuy Truong, Sherwin Gao, James Myoung, Charlene Jeune, Gavan Wilhite
  • Summary: Those with neuromuscular disabilities have limited interfaces to computers and devices, in some cases just a single button. Very few applications exist that support such an interface, especially video games. This video game will use binary control as an innovative interface.

Exhibition Projects

Project 1: Lunar Tuner Speech Commanding (View Project) (View Presentation)

  • Mentors
  • Summary: Typical music instrument tuners are visual based only. LunarTuner, created by Project:Possibility, gives not only visual feedback, but spoken feedback to the user as well. This exhibition project aims to add speech commanding ability to the software, so that the software can be operated completely hands-free.

Project 2: Head Tracker

  • Mentor: Joshua Doubleday (NASA JPL)
  • Summary: Mouse pointer control is a difficult activity for the mobility impaired, such as quadriplegics. This is an open source solution for hands free mouse control using a webcam. Computer vision algorithms will enable the user to control the mouse using head or eye gestures.

Project 3: Guitar Tab Translator (View Project)

  • Mentors:
  • Summary: Given guitar tablature freely available on the internet, this application will translate the tabs into a format which can be read by a screen reader.

Resources

These resources were provided as primer for the code-a-thon and are left here for reference.

Guidelines

Development

Software Applications

Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional Level Double-A conformance icon, W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0