[Music] If you're a camera, a 3D camera and you're looking at her, and she's
pointing in that direction. The question is What do you call 'x'
What do you call 'Y' and what do you call 'z'.
I would want to take all of the knowledge that I've learned through out this camp.
Using Quorum and maybe develop my own game. Maybe later down the line.
I really want to teach others. Uhm. That's sort of what I like to do. And
with quorum I can do that much easier.
As we're now going to say box. Tech nology jobs are in demand.
And an understanding of computing and coding is important for anyone pursuing
these opportunities. But learning programming languages can be difficult for
any new student, including some students with disabilities.
That's why quorum was created. My name is Andreas Stefik. I am an assistant
professor of Computer Science at The University of Nevada Las Vegas.
I invented the Quorum programming language, at first, then my wife and I
actually created several versions of it together.
It was originally designed to help blind and visually impaired students learn to
program more easily. the reason was
because at the time a lot of computer science
was moving toward a very visual content.
And that in general makes a lot of sense, however, not if you're blind.
I'm Richard Ladner, professor in computer
Science and engineering at the University of Washington.
So you really need sort of similar code to what you have there already.
So, they're not always so visual. If you look at almost all the tools that are out
Children who are blind, who can't see can actually program in Quorum.
And make things that talk, or have sound or have music.
there for children. They're all super visual.
And this one is visual and auditory.
So that makes it much better for every body.
I am Lauren Milne, I'm a graduate student
Uhm, I work with Richard Ladner and uhm, I
at University of Washington in Computer Science.
do a lot of research in programming languages
specifically for blind students. it has
full support for screen readers and braille displays
and it has a lot of features, it's very
easy to incorporate audio in programs
and a lot of things that you can play
around with in audio so it means you can
make really accessible, you know, you can
quickly and easily make accessible games
or, uh, whatever you'd like, uh, using Quorum.
Quorums features are universally designed
Making it an easier language to learn, in general.
One of the reasons why Quorum is easier
in some cases, for people to learn and grasp,
is because the language is simpler. Which
impacts people with learning disabilities.
For example, if I were to tell the computer
to do something over and over again,
in a language like Java, I would say (language on screen)
Which obviously means that we should do
something 10 times. In Quorum, I say repeat 10 times.
I find, personally, reading Quorum program
Java programs. I can understand them more
a lot easier than reading C programs or
easily and so I feel like there's major
advantages from the get go. Just that
simple elegance.
Most languages, after every single line
you have to put a semi colon. Why do you
have to put a semi colon? It seems to be
just tradition. It doesn't need to be there.
And Quorum, has no semi colons.
They thought that it would be really good
for certain students with learning disabilities
Quorum doesn't use braces, uhm, it uses
indentation and it uses keywords instead
to indicate the end of loops. I want you
to type the word model, and then I want
you to type the word box. Now there's a
red underline here because we haven't added.
Over the years, Quorum has gained popularity.
I'm Dominic and I'm really into computers,
and really enjoy using Quorum, and have
used other computer programs before like
C++ and Java. One of the things that
stands out to me in Quorum is the punctuation.
And it's like really easy to uhm because
you don't have to add in all the semi colons
and all the annoying like hash tags and @
symbols and everything. You just use words
basically, which is way easier than using
all those confusing symbols and I think
that makes it easier for me to program
in Quorum than in other languages.
Hi, I'm Alyssa. What makes Quorum easier
is the way they wrote, the way they program
for us to write the code. So we don't
have to add semi colons and brackets and
paranthesis and all this stuff. It, they
made it easier. You can just type in a
word, alpha, lets say for example and
then you can write in quotes whatever you
want the computer to say. And that's what
makes it a lot more unique than other
programming languages like Java.
I'm Mary. You can do a lot more things in
Quorum with less language code than in
some other things that I've used before.
Quorum is evidence based. Using the
results of Scientific experiments to determine how to make
the language easier to use.
Quorum provides two primary benefits. One
is everything is free. And then number
two, at the end of the day, all of the
materials that we use and that we give
the people are vetted both by teachers and
students and are vetted in experiements
through the scientific method.
The result is a programming language
that is creating a more inviting environment
for computing students.
A lot of people, I get to see in classes
that I've taught come in and, you know,
they get really intimidated the first, you
know, when they start programming and
there's all sorts of bugs, and it can be
very frustrating. People drop out, and
very often the people that stick around
are people who have come in, who come in
to a college course with previous programming experience
Anything that lowers that initial entry
is going to bring a lot more people, a lot
more diversity because of that.