Md Ehtesham-Ul-Haque

I am a 4th year Informatics Ph.D. student at Penn State working at the A11y Lab supervised by Dr. Syed Billah. My research is at the intersection of Accessibility, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and Education. I am working towards developing a universal and inclusive representation of computer programming concepts to provide easier access and better learnability for sighted and visually impaired students. Alongside this, I am exploring the use of Large Language Models to help fix accessibility issues in source code.

I completed my M.Sc. in Informatics from Penn State in 2023 and my B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

My Research interests include Accessibility, HCI, Cognitive and Learning Theories, Natural Language Processing, and Virtual Reality. My research has been accepted at top-tier HCI conferences, including UIST (best paper award), CHI, and IMWUT.

News and Updates

Jun 2025 - I have started my internship at Amazon!
Apr 2025 - Our paper, "ToPSen: Task-Oriented Priming and Sensory Alignment for Comparing Coding Strategies Between Sighted and Blind Programmers", is accepted at DIS 2025!
May 2024 - Our paper, "Cognitive Models for Abacus Gesture Learning", is accepted at CogSci 2024!
Apr 2024 - Successfully passed my comprehensive exam. Officially a Ph.D. candidate!
Jan 2024 - Received special recognition for outstanding review in CHI 2024.
Sep 2023 - Submitted one paper at CHI 2024.
Aug 2023 - My undergraduate work on artificial emotion generation is accepted at Cognitive Systems Research.
Aug 2023 - Submitted one paper at SIGCSE 2024.
Aug 2023 - Received my M.Sc. in Informatics from Penn State!
Aug 2023 - Our paper, "Abacus Gestures: A Large Set of Math-Based Usable Finger Counting Gestures for Mid-Air Interactions", is accepted at IMWUT (September 2023).
Apr 2023 - Received 3rd position in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion award at the Penn State Graduate Exhibition.
Apr 2023 - Submitted one paper at UIST 2023.
Feb 2023 - Submitted one paper at IMWUT.
Jan 2023 - Our paper, "Understanding the Usages, Lifecycle, and Opportunities of Screen Readers’ Plugins", is accepted at TACCESS.
Jan 2023 - Our paper, "Accessible Data Representation with Natural Sound", is accepted at CHI 2023.
Nov 2022 - Presented Grid-Coding at UIST 2022 in Bend, Oregon.
Nov 2022 - Grid-Coding is Featured in Penn State News.
Oct 2022 - Grid-Coding has received the best paper award at UIST 2022!
Jun 2022 - Our Paper, "Grid-Coding: An Accessible, Efficient, and Structured Coding Paradigm for Blind and Low-Vision Programmers", is accepted at UIST 2022.
May 2022 - Passed my Ph.D. qualifying exam!
Apr 2022 - Submitted one paper at UIST 2022.

Selected Publications

NumeroMotorCorrect: A Non-Pointer-based Mid-Air Text Correction System with Speech and Numeric Gestures

Md Ehtesham-Ul-Haque, Lay Patel, and Syed Masum Billah

Designed and developed a mid-air text editing and correction system using speech and abacus gestures.

Project Page / GitHub (web) / Live Demo (web)

A screenshot of a 9-line python code represented in Grid-Coding

Grid-Coding: An Accessible, Efficient, and Structured Coding Paradigm for Blind and Low-Vision Programmers

Md Ehtesham-Ul-Haque, Syed Mostofa Monsur, and Syed Masum Billah

UIST 2022 (best paper award)

Proposed a 2D grid representation of programming source code to improve the accessibility of code reading and writing for blind and low-vision programmers.

PDF / Preview / Video / Talk / Project Page / GitHub / Live Demo