Special Seminar - Rachel Adler, "Designing Accessible Health Technologies for Cancer Survivors with Disabilities"

Abstract: 
Rachel F. Adler is an Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are in human-computer interaction, accessibility, and computing education. She is particularly interested in designing applications for and with people with disabilities. Some of her projects include co-designing a mobile health app to empower cancer survivors with disabilities, co-designing a mobile health peer navigator intervention for people newly diagnosed with disabilities, and creating accessibility games to teach students about accessible design. 

Bio:
The transition from active treatment to long-term cancer survivorship often leaves many survivors navigating ongoing physical and cognitive challenges resulting from cancer and its treatment. These effects can impact daily functioning and make digital technologies more difficult to use. Despite these needs, research on accessible software design for cancer survivors remains limited. In this talk, I will present a series of projects addressing this gap, including the co-design of a mobile health app to empower cancer survivors with disabilities, a user-centered design study to develop accessibility guidelines for this population, and the creation of an accessibility game that helps students learn these design principles. The talk concludes with future directions for designing health technologies that support survivors’ physical and cognitive well-being.