Tommy McHugh
Software Engineer
Tommy McHugh is a software engineer at Apple working on the macOS accessibility team. He graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Learning Sciences with a specialization in Human-Computer Interaction. At Northwestern, he studied the design of technologies for accessibility, learning, and creativity. His research has explored how to empower students and content professionals with disabilities to build their own assistive technologies and how to design inclusive computional learning experiences through the creation of accessible digital media.
Tommy has received an award by the ACM and Microsoft for his research and he has previously interned at Google Research and Apple. He worked at the Northwestern Inclusive Technology Lab and the UCI Accessibility Research Collective, and was advised by Professor Anne Marie Piper. His work there was funded in part by NSF Grant IIS-1901456.
Want to learn more? Shoot him a note at tommymchugh@icloud.com.
Recent News
November 2021: Our paper entitled "Co11ab: Augmenting Accessibility in Synchronous Collaborative Writing for People with Vision Impairments" was accepted and will be presented by Maitraye Das at CHI 2022!
September 2021: I'll be joining Apple full-time as a Software Engineer in January 2022!
June 2021: Spending the summer as a software engineering intern at Apple!
June 2021: My paper entitled "Constructing Agency and Usability Through Community-Driven Assistive Technology Design" was first place at the ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals! Thanks to everyone who helped and supported me with my project.
February 2021: Our paper entitled "Towards Inclusive Streaming: Building Multimodal Music Experiences for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing" will be presented as a late-breaking work at CHI 2021.
October 2020: Our paper won the undergraduate ASSETS 2020 Student Research Competition. Thanks to everyone who provided support!
July 2020: Our paper entitled "Assistive Technology Design as a Computer Science Learning Experience" will be presented at the ASSETS 2020 Student Research Competition.
June 2020: Spending the summer as an intern on the MediaPipe live perception team at Google Research!
Publications
Co11ab: Augmenting Accessibility in Synchronous Collaborative Writing for People with Vision Impairments
Maitraye Das, Thomas B. McHugh, Anne Marie Piper, and Darren Gergle. CHI 2022.
Constructing Agency and Usability Through Community-Driven Assistive Technology Design
Thomas B. McHugh. ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals 2021.
Towards Inclusive Streaming: Building Multimodal Music Experiences for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Thomas B. McHugh, Abir Saha, David Bar-El, Marcelo Worsley, and Anne Marie Piper. CHI 2021.
Assistive Technology Design as a Computer Science Learning Experience
Thomas B. McHugh and Cooper Barth. ASSETS 2020.