Quorum: An Accessible Programming Language

This video serves as an introduction to the Quorum programming
language which is designed to be accessible to individuals with disabilities and is widely used in schools for the blind. Also available with audio description: https://youtu.be/E0pDz1hWee8

[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 throughout this camp.

Using Quorum and maybe develop my
own game. Maybe later down the line.

I really want to teach others.
That's sort of what I like to do.

And with Quorum I can
do that much easier.

Technology jobs are in demand.

And an understanding of computing and
coding are 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 similar code
to what you have there already.

Children who are blind, who can't see
can actually program in Quorum.

And make things that talk,
or have sound or have music.

So they're not
always so visual.

If you look at almost all
the tools that are out 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

at University of Washington
in Computer Science.

I work with Richard Ladner
and I 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 whatever you'd
like using Quorum.

Quorum's 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 programs

a lot easier than reading
C programs or

Java programs.

I can understand them more easily
and so I feel like there's some 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 hypothesized that it
would be really good

for certain students
with learning disabilities.

Quorum doesn't use braces,
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 because you
don't have to add in all the semi colons

and all the annoying like #'s 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.

They made it easier.
You can just type in a

word "output" 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 lines
of 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

to people are vetted
both by teachers and

students and are
vetted in experiments

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 have seen this

in intro classes that I've taught,
they come in and they get

really intimidated when
they start programming.

There's all sorts of bugs,
and it can be very frustrating.

People drop out, and very often
the only people who stick around

are people who come into 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.

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