arXiv subjects

Isabela Figueira

Publications and source records attributed to Isabela Figueira.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

"Coder first, advocate second, college student third": The Liminality of Going to College as a Blind Computing Student

Blind or low vision (BLV) students are less likely to graduate from college, particularly in computing. Prior work documents accessibility challenges in high school and college, but we lack understanding of the transition process that produces this "leaky pipeline." To address this, we interviewed ten BLV college students about going to college to study computing. We analyzed our data through the lens of life transition, specifically Intersecting Liminality. Our findings reveal that some BLV students face such immense digital accessibility and college acclimation barriers that the only way forward as coders is to take on a "second job" as a blind advocate or drop out of the computing major. We argue that the college transition is a critical point for analysis and technological intervention, and further, that Intersecting Liminality provides a useful lens for HCI scholars to unpack the compounding challenges that prevent some BLV students from completing computing degrees.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

VBIT: Towards Enhancing Privacy Control Over IoT Devices

Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are increasingly deployed at home, at work, and in other shared and public spaces. IoT devices collect and share data with service providers and third parties, which poses privacy concerns. Although privacy enhancing tools are quite advanced in other applications domains (\eg~ advertising and tracker blockers for browsers), users have currently no convenient way to know or manage what and how data is collected and shared by IoT devices. In this paper, we present VBIT, an interactive system combining Mixed Reality (MR) and web-based applications that allows users to: (1) uncover and visualize tracking services by IoT devices in an instrumented space and (2) take action to stop or limit that tracking. We design and implement VBIT to operate at the network traffic level, and we show that it has negligible performance overhead, and offers flexibility and good usability. We perform a mixed-method user study consisting of an online survey and an in-person interview study. We show that VBIT users appreciate VBIT's transparency, control, and customization features, and they become significantly more willing to install an IoT advertising and tracking blocker, after using VBIT. In the process, we obtain design insights that can be used to further iterate and improve the design of VBIT and other systems for IoT transparency and control.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Intersecting Liminality: Acquiring a Smartphone as a Blind or Low Vision Older Adult

Older adults are increasingly acquiring smartphones. But acquiring smartphones can be difficult, and little is known about the particular challenges of older adults who are additionally blind or losing their vision. We shed light on the social and technical aspects of acquiring smartphones with vision loss, based on deep qualitative interviews with 22 blind or low vision (BLV) older adults aged 60 and over. Through our grounded theory analysis, we found that BLV older adults experience liminality as they acquire smartphones and transition through re-acquiring smartphones as they become blind, and they can transition through liminality by participating in mutual aid within the blind community. We contribute the notion of "Intersecting Liminality," which explains the marginalizing experience of simultaneously transitioning through vision loss, aging, and technology acquisition. We contend that Intersecting Liminality can serve as a framework that centers the dynamic nature of disability to help our community generate a more nuanced understanding of technology acquisition and more effective assistive interventions.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Understanding the Career Mobility of Blind and Low Vision Software Professionals

Context: Scholars in the software engineering (SE) research community have investigated career advancement in the software industry. Research topics have included how individual and external factors can impact career mobility of software professionals, and how gender affects career advancement. However, the community has yet to look at career mobility from the lens of accessibility. Specifically, there is a pressing need to illuminate the factors that hinder the career mobility of blind and low vision software professionals (BLVSPs). Objective: This study aims to understand aspects of the workplace that impact career mobility for BLVSPs. Methods: We interviewed 26 BLVSPs with different roles, years of experience, and industry sectors. Thematic analysis was used to identify common factors related to career mobility. Results: We found four factors that impacted the career mobility of BLVSPs: (1) technical challenges, (2) colleagues' perceptions of BLVSPs, (3) BLVSPs' own perceptions on managerial progression, and (4) BLVSPs' investment in accessibility at the workplace. Conclusion: We suggest implications for tool designers, organizations, and researchers towards fostering more accessible workplaces to support the career mobility of BLVSPs.

cs.SE↗