Local people with disabilities are learning computer programming at East Stroudsburg University (Pennsylvania) through Project ENABLE, a pilot program that will spark interest — and, the group's coordinator hopes, jobs — in computer science.
Seven students of the program met Thursday with New Mexico State University computer science experts Jeanine Cook and Heather Pfeiffer in a classroom on the ESU campus. They worked on the Alice computer program, an educational tool that teaches coding, the language of computers.
The "grand vision" of Project ENABLE, Cook said, is to connect universities and employers with people with mobility impairments. For now, researchers will use the pilot program to find out what is feasible.
Transportation issues contribute to an unemployment rate of 65 percent to 75 percent among individuals with mobility impairments, said John Chang, an ESU psychology professor who coordinates the program. Computer science is well-suited for those with disabilities because it avoids some of these problems, said Chang, who is quadriplegic and uses a motorized wheelchair.
Two more classes will be held in January and August 2010. It is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, which will expire in 2010. Cook plans to submit another proposal when it expires, she said.
The computer program teaches students about coding, a major element of computer science, in a visual, interactive way. "Just showing them code doesn't seem to hit home," Cook said.
Designed by Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch and featured in his now-famous "The Last Lecture," Alice looks more like a video game than string of 1s and 0s. Students enter commands, telling characters to go left or right, to conceptualize coding.
Some students do not have use of their arms or hands, so researchers are working to replace mouse clicks with eye movements and voice commands, Cook said.
Cook, a self-described "hardcore researcher," has spent her career designing computer processors. Her interest in starting a program for disabled people came in part from her work on the technology to help eminent theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking speak faster. Hawking suffers from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and uses a computer to communicate.
"That's where I got my heart for helping people with disabilities)," said Cook, who is paraplegic. "My life is a struggle, but I look at people who have even more of a struggle."
She wrote the proposal for the program to the National Science Foundation because nobody else was.
"Someone needed to step forward and do something for this group," she said.
With fewer and fewer people going into computer science, the focus of the program is to bring in people from groups that haven't realized their full potential, such as people with mobility impairments, Cook said.
Effort native Onel Ramirez Jr. won't be joining the field, but said that he will use concepts he learned from the class to create history projects for the high school students he plans to teach. The ESU senior was born with spina bifida, a spinal birth defect that can cause full or partial paralysis.
"In my head I'm thinking, 'How can I use this for educational purposes?'" Ramirez said. "And there's so much. I used to think it was just 1s and 0s, but this has opened up a whole new mindset."
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