Due to the increasing cost of Ph.D. students, decreasing funding rates, and current size of the ACE Lab, I will not be taking new Ph.D. students until, at the earliest, academic year 2026-2027.
UNIVERSITY of  WASHINGTON Information School Computer Science & Engineering
Jacob O. Wobbrock Professor, The Information School
By courtesy, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
  Jacob O. Wobbrock, Ph.D.
The Information School
University of Washington
Box 352840
Seattle, WA 98195-2840   USA

 
 

Videos

Ability-Based Design Mobile Toolkit (ABD-MT)
Kong, J., Zhong, M., Fogarty, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2024). The Ability-Based Design Mobile Toolkit (ABD-MT): Developer support for runtime interface adaptation based on users' abilities. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (MobileHCI '24). Melbourne, Australia (September 30-October 3, 2024). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 277.
I am CSE: Ather Sharif
ACE Lab Ph.D. student Ather Sharif explains his work on VoxLens.
A11yBoard
Zhang, Z.J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2023). A11yBoard: Making digital artboards accessible to blind and low-vision users. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Hamburg, Germany (April 23-28, 2023). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 55
Keynote: Michigan A.I. Symposium
Wobbrock, J.O. (2022). Ability-based design: What role might A.I. play? Opening Keynote, Michigan A.I. Symposium. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.
New touch metrics
Kong, J., Zhong, M., Fogarty, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2022). Quantifying touch: New metrics for characterizing what happens during a touch. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22). Athens, Greece (October 23-26, 2022). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 33.
VoxLens
Sharif, A., Wang, O.H., Muongchan, A.T., Reinecke, K. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2022). VoxLens: Making online data visualizations accessible with an interactive JavaScript plug-in. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). New Orleans, Louisiana (April 30-May 5, 2022). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 478.
TypeAnywhere
Zhang, M.R., Zhai, S. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2022). TypeAnywhere: A QWERTY-based text entry solution for ubiquitous computing. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). New Orleans, Louisiana (April 30-May 5, 2022). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 339.
Longitudinal analysis of mobile app accessibility
Fok, R., Zhong, M., Ross, A.S., Fogarty, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2022). A large-scale longitudinal analysis of missing label accessibility failures in Android apps. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). New Orleans, Louisiana (April 30-May 5, 2022). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 461.
Ga11y
Zhang, M.R., Zhong, M. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2022). Ga11y: An automated GIF annotation system for visually impaired users. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). New Orleans, Louisiana (April 30-May 5, 2022). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 197.
Elicitation study agreement calculations
Vatavu, R.-D. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2022). Clarifying agreement calculations and analysis for end-user elicitation studies. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 29 (1). Article No. 5.
Accessibility of data visualizations
Sharif, A., Chintalapati, S.S., Wobbrock, J.O. and Reinecke, K. (2021). Understanding screen-reader users' experiences with online data visualizations. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '21). Virtual Event (October 18-22, 2021). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 14.
Touch with limited fine motor function
Kong, J., Zhong, M., Fogarty, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2021). New metrics for understanding touch by people with and without limited fine motor function. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '21). Virtual Event (October 18-22, 2021). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 80.
ART contrasts (ART-C)
Elkin, L.A., Kay, M., Higgins, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2021). An aligned rank transform procedure for multifactor contrast tests. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '21). Virtual Event (October 10-14, 2021). New York: ACM Press, pp. 754-768.
Accessibility of digital artboards
Schaadhardt, A., Hiniker, A. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2021). Understanding blind screen-reader users' experiences of digital artboards. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21). Yokohama, Japan (May 8-13, 2021). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 270.
"I am Iron Man"
Ali, A.X., Morris, M.R. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2021). "I am Iron Man": Priming improves the learnability and memorability of user-elicited gestures. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21). Yokohama, Japan (May 8-13, 2021). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 359.
Voicemoji
Zhang, M.R., Wang, R., Xu, X., Li, Q., Sharif, A. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2021). Voicemoji: Emoji entry using voice for visually impaired people. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21). Yokohama, Japan (May 8-13, 2021). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 37.
Lexical vs. semantic emojis
Zhang, M.R., Mariakakis, A., Burke, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2021). A comparative study of lexical and semantic emoji suggestion systems. Proceedings of iConference 2021. Beijing, China (March 17-31, 2021). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 12645. Switzerland: Springer, pp. 229-247.
Keynote: HUMAN 2020
Wobbrock, J.O. (2020). Hypertext, social media, and civic engagement: How hypertext is ruining the world, and might just save it. Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Human Factors in Hypertext (HUMAN '20). Virtual Event (December 4, 2020). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 2.
Reliability of Fitts' law
Sharif, A., Pao, V., Reinecke, K. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2020). The reliability of Fitts's law as a movement model for people with and without limited fine motor function. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '20). Athens, Greece (October 26-28, 2020). New York: ACM Press. Article No. 16.
Survey of gesture elicitation studies
Villarreal-Narvaez, S., Vanderdonckt, J., Vatavu, R.-D. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2020). A systematic review of gesture elicitation studies: What can we learn from 216 studies? Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '20). Eindhoven, Netherlands (July 6-10, 2020). New York: ACM Press, pp. 855-872.
Gedit
Zhang, M.R. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2020). Gedit: Keyboard gestures for mobile text editing. Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI '20). Toronto, Ontario (May 28-29, 2020). Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Information Processing Society. Article No. 45.
Gedit demo
Zhang, M.R. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2020). Gedit: Keyboard gestures for mobile text editing. Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI '20). Toronto, Ontario (May 28-29, 2020). Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Information Processing Society. Article No. 45.
Type, Then Correct (TTC)
Zhang, M.R., Wen, H. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2019). Type, then correct: Intelligent text correction techniques for mobile text entry using neural networks. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '19). New Orleans, Louisiana (October 20-23, 2019). New York: ACM Press, pp. 843-855.
Transcription sequences
Zhang, M.R. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2019). Beyond the input stream: Making text entry evaluations more flexible with transcription sequences. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '19). New Orleans, Louisiana (October 20-23, 2019). New York: ACM Press, pp. 831-842.
Addressing situational impairments in mobile HCI
Talk given on February 15, 2019 at Stanford University's Seminar on People, Computers, and Design.
2017 ACM SIGCHI
Social Impact Award

Talk given on May 9, 2017 at ACM CHI in Denver, Colorado for the award. Wobbrock, J.O. (2017). Ability-based design: Elevating ability over disability in accessible computing. Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). Denver, Colorado (May 6-11, 2017). New York: ACM Press, pp. 5-7.
Group Touch
Evans, A.C., Davis, K., Fogarty, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2017). Group Touch: Distinguishing tabletop users in group settings via statistical modeling of touch pairs. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). Denver, Colorado (May 6-11, 2017). New York: ACM Press, pp. 35-47.
Dwell-based gaze typing
Mott, M.E., Williams, S., Wobbrock, J.O. and Morris, M.R. (2017). Improving dwell-based gaze typing with dynamic, cascading dwell times. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). Denver, Colorado (May 6-11, 2017). New York: ACM Press, pp. 2558-2570.
Interaction proxies
Zhang, X., Ross, A., Caspi, A., Fogarty, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2017). Interaction proxies for runtime repair and enhancement of mobile application accessibility. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17). Denver, Colorado (May 6-11, 2017). New York: ACM Press, pp. 6024-6037.
"Slide to Unlock"
featuring our work on Smart Touch. Part of an interactive feature for the University of Washington Be Boundless Campaign. April 3, 2017.
Smart Touch
Mott, M.E., Vatavu, R.-D., Kane, S.K. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2016). Smart Touch: Improving touch accuracy for people with motor impairments with template matching. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). San Jose, California (May 7-12, 2016). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1934-1946.
Gesture elicitation agreement
Vatavu, R.-D. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2016). Between-subjects elicitation studies: Formalization and tool support. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). San Jose, California (May 7-12, 2016). New York: ACM Press, pp. 3390-3402.

Vatavu, R.-D. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2015). Formalizing agreement analysis for elicitation studies: New measures, significance test, and toolkit. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). Seoul, Korea (April 18-23, 2015). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1325-1334.
SwitchBack
Mariakakis, A., Goel, M., Aumi, M.T.I., Patel, S.N. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2015). SwitchBack: Using focus and saccade tracking to guide users' attention for mobile task resumption. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). Seoul, Korea (April 18-23, 2015). New York: ACM Press, pp. 2953-2962.
Adoption-centered design
Chilana, P.K., Ko, A.J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2015). From user-centered to adoption-centered design: A case study of an HCI research innovation becoming a product. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). Seoul, Korea (April 18-23, 2015). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1749-1758.
Gesture heatmaps
Vatavu, R.-D., Anthony, L. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2014). Gesture heatmaps: Understanding gesture performance with colorful visualizations. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI '14). Istanbul, Turkey (November 12-16, 2014). New York: ACM Press, pp. 172-179.
MobileASL
Tran, J.J., Flowers, B., Riskin, E.A., Ladner, R.E. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2014). Analyzing the intelligibility of real-time mobile sign language video transmitted below recommended standards. Proceedings of the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '14). Rochester, New York (October 20-22, 2014). New York: ACM Press, pp. 177-184.
"Sound Startups"
featuring AnswerDash, a startup founded from our work on LemonAid
Bubble Lens
Mott, M.E. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2014). Beating the bubble: Using kinematic triggering in the Bubble Lens for acquiring small, dense targets. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). Toronto, Ontario (April 26-May 1, 2014). New York: ACM Press, pp. 733-742.
Pointing endpoint prediction
Pasqual, P.T. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2014). Mouse pointing endpoint prediction using kinematic template matching. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). Toronto, Ontario (April 26-May 1, 2014). New York: ACM Press, pp. 743-752.
Gesture accuracy measures
Vatavu, R.-D., Anthony, L. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2013). Relative accuracy measures for stroke gestures. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI '13). Sydney, Australia (December 9-13, 2013). New York: ACM Press, pp. 279-286.
Gesture clustering
Anthony, L., Vatavu, R.-D. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2013). Understanding the consistency of users' pen and finger stroke gesture articulation. Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI '13). Regina, Saskatchewan (May 29-31, 2013). Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Information Processing Society, pp. 87-94.
Access Lens
Kane, S.K., Frey, B. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2013). Access Lens: A gesture-based screen reader for real-world documents. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). Paris, France (April 27-May 2, 2013). New York: ACM Press, pp. 347-350.
Q-methodology for HCI
O'Leary, K., Wobbrock, J.O. and Riskin, E.A. (2013). Q-methodology as a research and design tool for HCI. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). Paris, France (April 27-May 2, 2013). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1941-1950.
Older adults & touchscreens
Findlater, L., Froehlich, J., Fattal, K., Wobbrock, J.O. and Dastyar, T. (2013). Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). Paris, France (April 27-May 2, 2013). New York: ACM Press, pp. 343-346.
"iOn the Future"
featuring our work on the Angle Mouse and the Pointing Magnifier (see 20:56 - 25:36)
$P gesture recognizer
Vatavu, R.-D., Anthony, L. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2012). Gestures as point clouds: A $P recognizer for user interface prototypes. Proceedings of the ACM Int'l Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI '12). Santa Monica, California (October 22-26, 2012). New York: ACM Press, pp. 273-280.
GripSense
Goel, M., Wobbrock, J.O. and Patel, S.N. (2012). GripSense: Using built-in sensors to detect hand posture and pressure on commodity mobile phones. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '12). Cambridge, Massachusetts (October 7-10, 2012). New York: ACM Press, pp. 545-554.
Perkinput
Azenkot, S., Wobbrock, J.O., Prasain, S. and Ladner, R.E. (2012). Input Finger Detection for nonvisual touch screen text entry in Perkinput. Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI '12). Toronto, Ontario (May 28-30, 2012). Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Information Processing Society, pp. 121-129.
Gesture-Augmented Keyboards
Findlater, L., Lee, B.Q. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2012). Beyond Qwerty: Augmenting touch screen keyboards with multi-touch gestures for non-alphanumeric input. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). Austin, Texas (May 5-10, 2012). New York: ACM Press, pp. 2679-2682.
LemonAid
Chilana, P.K., Ko, A.J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2012). LemonAid: Selection-based crowdsourced contextual help for web applications. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). Austin, Texas (May 5-10, 2012). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1549-1558.
The Prefab bubble cursor
Dixon, M., Fogarty, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2012). A general-purpose target-aware pointing enhancement using pixel-level analysis of graphical interfaces. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). Austin, Texas (May 5-10, 2012). New York: ACM Press, pp. 3167-3176.
Accessible pointing techniques
featuring our work on the Angle Mouse and the Pointing Magnifier
Portico
Avrahami, D., Wobbrock, J.O. and Izadi, S. (2011). Portico: Tangible interaction on and around a tablet. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '11). Santa Barbara, California (October 16-19, 2011). New York: ACM Press, pp. 347-356.
Access Overlays
Kane, S.K., Morris, M.R., Perkins, A.Z., Wigdor, D., Ladner, R.E., and Wobbrock, J.O. (2011). Access Overlays: Improving non-visual access to large touch screens for blind users. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '11). Santa Barbara, California (October 16-19, 2011). New York: ACM Press, pp. 273-282.
VoiceGames
Harada, S., Wobbrock, J.O. and Landay, J.A. (2011). Voice Games: Investigation into the use of non-speech voice input for making computer games more accessible. Proceedings of the 13th IFIP TC13 Int'l Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT '11). Lisbon, Portugal (September 5-9, 2011). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6946/2011. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag, pp. 11-29.
Typing on touch screens
Findlater, L., Wobbrock, J.O. and Wigdor, D. (2011). Typing on flat glass: Examining ten-finger expert typing patterns on touch surfaces. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11). Vancouver, British Columbia (May 7-12, 2011). New York: ACM Press, pp. 2453-2462.
Enhanced area cursors
Findlater, L., Jansen, A., Shinohara, K., Dixon, M., Kamb, P., Rakita, J. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2010). Enhanced area cursors: Reducing fine-pointing demands for people with motor impairments. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '10). New York, NY (October 3-6, 2010). New York: ACM Press, pp. 153-162.
Micro-projected guides
Rosenthal, S., Kane, S.K., Wobbrock, J.O. and Avrahami, D. (2010). Augmenting on-screen instructions with micro-projected guides: When it works, and when it fails. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp '10). Copenhagen, Denmark (September 26-29, 2010). New York: ACM Press, pp. 203-212.
Bonfire
Kane, S.K., Avrahami, D., Wobbrock, J.O., Harrison, B., Rea, A., Philipose, M. and LaMarca, A. (2009). Bonfire: A nomadic system for hybrid laptop-tabletop interaction. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '09). Victoria, British Columbia (October 4-7, 2009). New York: ACM Press, pp. 129-138.
Angle Mouse
Wobbrock, J.O., Fogarty, J.A., Liu, S., Kimuro, S. and Harada, S. (2009). The Angle Mouse: Target-agnostic dynamic gain adjustment based on angular deviation. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09). Boston, Massachusetts (April 4-9, 2009). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1401-1410.
Slide Rule
Kane, S.K., Bigham, J.P. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2008). Slide Rule: Making mobile touch screens accessible to blind people using multi-touch interaction techniques. Proceedings of the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '08). Halifax, Nova Scotia (October 13-15, 2008). New York: ACM Press, pp. 73-80.
Supple
Gajos, K.Z., Wobbrock, J.O. and Weld, D.S. (2008). Improving the performance of motor-impaired users with automatically-generated, ability-based interfaces. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08). Florence, Italy (April 5-10, 2008). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1257-1266.
EyeWrite
Wobbrock, J.O., Rubinstein, J., Sawyer, M.W. and Duchowski, A.T. (2008). Longitudinal evaluation of discrete consecutive gaze gestures for text entry. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA '08). Savannah, Georgia (March 26-28, 2008). New York: ACM Press, pp. 11-18.
Barrier Pointing
Froehlich, J., Wobbrock, J.O. and Kane, S.K. (2007). Barrier Pointing: Using physical edges to assist target acquisition on mobile device touch screens. Proceedings of the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '07). Tempe, Arizona (October 15-17, 2007). New York: ACM Press, pp. 19-26.
"Speaking in Pictures"
featuring our work on VoiceDraw
VoiceDraw
Harada, S., Wobbrock, J.O. and Landay, J.A. (2007). VoiceDraw: A voice-driven hands-free drawing application. Proceedings of the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '07). Tempe, Arizona (October 15-17, 2007). New York: ACM Press, pp. 27-34.
Steering wheel text entry
Gonzalez, I.E., Wobbrock, J.O., Chau, D.H., Faulring, A. and Myers, B.A. (2007). Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel: Thumb-based interaction techniques for input on steering wheels. Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI '07). Montreal, Quebec (May 28-30, 2007). Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Information Processing Society, pp. 95-102.
"Hi-Tech Typing"
featuring our work on Trackball EdgeWrite
Trackball EdgeWrite
Wobbrock, J.O. and Myers, B.A. (2006). Trackball text entry for people with motor impairments. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '06). Montreal, Quebec (April 22-27, 2006). New York: ACM Press, pp. 479-488.
EdgeWrite
Wobbrock, J.O., Myers, B.A. and Kembel, J.A. (2003). EdgeWrite: A stylus-based text entry method designed for high accuracy and stability of motion. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '03). Vancouver, British Columbia (November 2-5, 2003). New York: ACM Press, pp. 61-70.
WebThumb
Wobbrock, J.O., Forlizzi, J., Hudson, S.E. and Myers, B.A. (2002). WebThumb: Interaction techniques for small-screen browsers. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '02). Paris, France (October 27-30, 2002). New York: ACM Press, pp. 205-208.