A Beautiful Portrait of Lauren

Contact

lmilne@macalester.edu

OLRI 225
Department of MSCS
1600 Grand Avenue
Saint Paul, MN 55105

I'm an assistant professor of Computer Science at Macalester College in the department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science. I received my PhD in Computer Science and Engineering in June 2018 from the University of Washington, where I was an NSF graduate research fellow who worked with Richard Ladner. My dissertation topic was on exploring touchscreen accessibility for children who are blind or have low vision. I graduated magna cum laude from Carleton College in 2008 with a B.A. in Physics, and spent three years working as a personal care assistant to a young man with a disability and one year working as a "Mad Scientist", doing outreach events to get elementary school children excited about science.

I am interested broadly in making STEM education and computer science more accessible for underrepresented groups and am an AccessComputing partner and a member of CSForALL. My research has focused on designing accessible programming tools such as Blocks4All and StructJumper, and I have participated in a number of outreach events, including teaching the Processing to Deaf and hard-of-hearing high schoolers at the Saturday Computing Experience and volunteering at the Empowering Blind Students in Science and Engineering workshop.

Outside of school, I enjoy hiking, biking, skijoring (cross country skiing with dogs), triathlons and roller derby.

Download CV

Projects

Blocks4All
Braille Play Games
ScopeJumper
Tactile Graphics with a Voice

Publications

  • Joslenne Peña, Lauren R. Milne. 2024. Web Development + Accessibility. To be included in Teaching Accessible Computing. Edited by Amy Ko, Alannah Oleson, and Richard Ladner (Book Chapter).
  • Catherine M. Baker*, Lauren R. Milne*, Richard E. Ladner. 2019. Understanding the Impact of TVIs on Technology Use and Selection by Children with Visual Impairments. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (PDF) (* co-first authors)
  • Lauren R. Milne, and Richard E. Ladner. 2018. Blocks4All: Overcoming Accessibility Barriers to Blocks Programming for Children with Visual Impairments. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ‘18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (PDF)
  • Annuska Zolyomi, Anne Ross, Arpita Bhattacharya, Lauren R. Milne and Sean Munson. 2018. Values, Identity, and Social Translucence: Neurodiverse Student Teams in Higher Education. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ‘18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (PDF)
  • Catherine M. Baker, Lauren R. Milne, Ryan Drapeau, Jeffrey Scofield, Cynthia L. Bennett, and Richard E. Ladner. 2016. Tactile Graphics with a Voice. In ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing. 8, 1 Article 3, January 2016. ACM, New York, NY, USA. 22 pages. (PDF)
  • Kyle Rector, Lauren R. Milne, Richard E. Ladner, Batya Friedman, Julie A. Kientz. 2015. Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges with Exercise Technologies for People who are Bind or Low-Vision. In Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (PDF)
  • Catherine M. Baker, Lauren R. Milne, and Richard E. Ladner. 2015. StructJumper: A Tool to Help Blind Programmers Navigate and Understand the Structure of Code. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ‘15). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (PDF)
  • Lauren R. Milne, Cynthia L. Bennett, Shiri Azenkot, and Richard E. Ladner. 2014. BraillePlay: Educational Smartphone Games for Blind Children. In Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (PDF)
  • Best Student Paper: Catherine M. Baker, Lauren R. Milne, Jeffrey Scofield, Cynthia L. Bennett, and Richard E. Ladner. 2014. Tactile Graphics with a Voice: Using QR Codes to Access Text in Tactile Graphics. In Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (PDF)
  • Lauren R. Milne, Cynthia L. Bennett, and Richard E. Ladner. 2014. The Accessibility of Mobile Health Sensors for Blind Users. In 29th Annual International & Persons with Disabilities Conference (CSUN ’14). (PDF)

Conference Posters (with Short Papers)

  • Adele Smolansky, Catherine M. Baker, Shiri Azenkot, Lauren R. Milne. 2024. Perspectives of Assistive Technology Industry Professionals on AT for Children. Late Breaking Work in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA.
  • Jacqueline Shao Yi Ong**, Nana Adwoa O. Amoah**, Alison E. Garrett-Engele**, Mariella Irene Page**, Katherine R. McCarthy*, and Lauren R. Milne. 2019. Demo: Expanding Blocks4All with Variables and Functions. In Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (** Macalester Student)
  • Logan B. Caraco**, Sebastian Deibel**, Yufan Ma**, and Lauren R. Milne. 2019. Making the Blockly Library Accessible via Touchscreen. In Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (** Macalester Student)
  • Lauren R. Milne, Richard E. Lander. 2019. Position Paper: Accessible Block-Based Programming: Why and How. In Proceedings of the IEEE 2019 Blocks and Beyond Workshop. IEEE Computer Society, USA.
  • Lauren R. Milne, Richard E. Lander. 2019. Blocks4All: Making Blocks-Based Programming Languages Accessible for Children with Visual Impairments. In Proceedings of the 50th ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '19). ACM, New York, NY, USA.
  • Lauren R. Milne, Catherine M. Baker, Richard E. Ladner. 2017. Blocks4All Demonstration: a Blocks-Based Programming Environment for Blind Children. In Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA.
  • Annuska Zolyomi, Anne Ross, Arpita Bhattacharya, Lauren R. Milne and Sean Munson. 2017. Value Sensitive Design for Neurodiverse Teams in Higher Education. In Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA.
  • Lauren R. Milne. 2017. Blocks4All: Making Block Programming Languages Accessible for Blind Children. SIGACCESS Access. Comput. 117 (February 2017), 26-29.
  • Catherine M. Baker, Lauren R. Milne, Jeffrey Scofield, Cynthia L. Bennett, and Richard E. Ladner. 2014. Tactile Graphics with a Voice Demonstration. In Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA.
  • Lauren R. Milne, Cynthia L. Bennett, and Richard E. Ladner. 2013. VBGhost: a Braille-Based Educational Smartphone Game for Children. In Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 75, 2 pages.