Award for inclusion research program

Accessibility research is critical in its opportunity to advance inclusive technology that can enable and improve access for diverse user populations. Google's mission to "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful emphasizes the importance of accessibility at the company-level. Google works on a broad range of topics in accessibility to ensure that our technology is accessible and that it empowers people with disabilities to be socially engaged, productive, and independent. We are committed to research that advances the state-of-the-art in usable, useful, inclusive, and accessible technology.

Google strives for broad inclusion through support for assistive technologies, and research and development that aid people with vision, hearing, speech, motor, and/or cognitive disabilities.

For our program, we call for proposals specifically in the areas of:

• Wearable computing and augmentative technology
• Inclusive remote communication and telepresence to aid in collaboration among people with and without disabilities
• Transportation and mobility
• Tools and techniques for cognitive inclusion

Collaboration is responsible for far-reaching advances in computing. For example, such collaboration can occur in online communities like Wikipedia, open source software development projects, or teams of information workers in companies. Diverse and inclusive collaborations can create technology and products that are more inclusive of all users.

For our program, we call for proposals specifically in the areas of:

• Collaboration strategies to ensure that technological solutions meet the needs of a diverse set of users
• Scalable and repeatable interventions to help avoid technological solutions that might cause harm to historically marginalized and underserved communities
• Mitigating bias among collaborative teams
• Increasing belonging in collaborative teams

Collective & society-centered AI research at Google builds upon traditions of multidisciplinary research. A community-collaborative approach actively involves impacted stakeholders throughout the application, system, or service design process to ensure their needs are met and can lead to AI systems that have a higher potential to benefit the community. The hallmark of these projects is that these will involve at least two stakeholder groups collaborating. Stakeholder groups include: researchers, developers, creators, end-users, community organizations, governments, citizens, and others.

For our program, we call for proposals specifically in the areas of:

• AI innovations for societal needs: transparency, work, education, collaboration, safety, quality, human-machine collaboration. Impact on creative community & regulation.
• AI integration with society: sociotechnical investigations of adoption, data, attitudes, responsible AI, & marginalized communities.
• AI development lifecycle: novel tools, infrastructure, and methods for collaboration, governance, and impact assessment.

As we look towards the future of computing education, artificial intelligence (AI) is set to transform learning, teaching and assessment. At Google, we are committed to ensuring that the benefits of new technologies are universally accessible and useful. Given the current inequities in the computing education ecosystem, it is critical to support academic research on how and to what extent AI will impact computing in primary, secondary and higher education (at a systems-level) and pedagogical innovation.

For our program, we call for proposals specifically in the areas of:

• Examination of system-level effects of generative AI on K-16 computing education.
• Investigation of the effects of generative AI tools on pedagogy and learning, both opportunities and risks.
• Assessment of scalable models of educator professional development that incorporate generative AI tools.
• Exploration of foundational skills and knowledge students will need in computing education enabled by generative AI tools.