[Unified Braille For All] STEM Innovators from the braille community

[Jake Joehl]

Congrats to all 14 honorees! I remember Duxbury from the days when I used the AppleII with Echo and Cricket.
Jake
Please visit me at http://www.samobile.net/users/jjoehl .
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Susan Jolly 
To: Unified Braille for All 
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2012 6:09 PM
Subject: [Unified Braille For All] STEM Innovators from the braille community


After my signature I've copied part of a notice just posted elsewhere."On 
Monday, May 7th, the White House will honor 14 individuals as Champions of 
Change for leading the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math 
for people with disabilities in education and employment."

The notice has information about all 14 honorees  Here I've copied the 
information for the six who are doing work specific to STEM in the braille 
community. My understanding is that of these six all but the first, Joseph 
Sullivan, are braille users. I've omitted quotation marks in what follows.

Sincerely,
Susan Jolly

Joseph Sullivan is president of Duxbury Systems, Inc., a small company that 
has specialized in software for braille since its founding in 1975, and 
which now employs two blind people and which provides braille translation 
software for more than 130 languages worldwide.  He has also served on many 
braille-related committees, including the Literary Braille and Computer 
Braille Committees of the Braille Authority of North America, was chair of 
the technical design subcommittee of the Unified English Braille (UEB) 
project of the International Council on English Braille (ICEB), and 
currently serves on the UEB Maintenance Committee of ICEB.  Joe believes 
that braille is the key to literacy for blind persons, that literacy is the 
key to an informed citizenry, and that an informed citizenry is essential to 
civilization.

Steve Jacobs is President of IDEAL Group. Steve is dedicated to enhancing 
the accessibility of STEM curriculum for students with disabilities. Steve's 
company offers software that translates printed STEM materials into digital 
formats for conversion into speech and Braille.  Steve's company also 
developed fully-accessible STEM-enabled eBook reading software. Over the 
past 3-1/2 years, Steve's company has become one of the world's largest 
developer of mobile accessibility applications with five million 
installations in 136 countries. Steve is also working with many institutions 
to tech-transfer their STEM-related work to mobile platforms. These 
institutions include Smith-Kettlewell's Video Description R&D Center, 
University of Oregon's Mathematics eText Research Center, and Georgia Tech 
wireless RERC and sonification lab. Steve is a 1973 graduate of Ohio State 
University. Steve and wife Pauline have been married for 37 years. Pauline 
and Steve have two daughters, Shana and Jessica, and a granddaughter Brooke 
Christine. who is Steve's boss.

George Kerscher began his IT innovations in 1987 and coined the term "print 
disabled."  George is dedicated to developing technologies that make 
information not only accessible, but also fully functional in the hands of 
persons who are blind or who have a print disability. He believes properly 
designed information systems can make all information accessible to all 
people and is working to push evolving technologies in this direction. As 
Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium and President of the International 
Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), Kerscher is a recognized international 
leader in document access.  In addition, Kerscher is the Senior Officer of 
Accessible Technology at Learning Ally in the USA.  He chairs the DAISY/NISO 
Standards committee, and serves on the USA National Instructional Materials 
Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) Board.

As a child in the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind in 1949, 
John Boyer found that contemporary scientific material in braille was almost 
non-existent. John has never lost the sense of frustration he felt when the 
braille resources available to him were insufficient to satisfy his hunger 
for more science education. John believes that is the motive for his life's 
work. He obtained a master's degree in Computer science, with a minor in 
electronics engineering at the University of Wisconsin in 1980. His first 
company was a Braille publishing enterprise which served an international 
client base. Abilitiessoft, Inc., his current company, creates open source 
adaptive software which makes Web pages available to blind persons through a 
Braille display. The current project, BrailleBlaster, will allow the 
integration of text with Braille graphics such as maps and graphs into a 
format accessible to blind people.

Henry Wedler is a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, 
working towards his Ph.D. in organic chemistry. Inspired by programs offered 
by the National Federation of the Blind in high school and with 
encouragement from professors, colleagues and others, Henry gained the 
confidence to challenge and refute the mistaken belief that STEM fields are 
too visual and, therefore, impractical for blind people.  Henry is not only 
following his own passion; he is working hard to develop the next generation 
of scientists by founding and teaching at an annual chemistry camp for blind 
and low-vision high school students. Chemistry Camp demonstrates to these 
students, by example and through practice, that their lack of eyesight 
should not hold them back from pursuing their dreams. Henry was nominated by 
Douglas Sprei of Learning Ally, a nonprofit that produces accessible audio 
textbooks for blind and learning disabled students, which is an 
indispensable resource that allowed him to excel in school.

Sina Bahram is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at North 
Carolina State University.  His field of research is Human Computer 
Interaction (HCI).  Sina's primary interest is the dynamic translation of 
interfaces, with an emphasis on innovative environments being used by 
persons with visual impairment (PWVI) to facilitate learning, independence, 
and exploration.  His other research interests focus on using AI inspired 
techniques to solve real-world user-centric problems.  When he is not busy 
with his academic pursuits, Sina enjoys staying on the bleeding edge of 
technology and working with small, high-tech startup companies.  Sina's 
passion for his field originally stems from the fact that he is mostly blind 
and uses assistive technologies such as a screen reader to navigate computer 
systems and technological devices.  After experimenting in the fields of 
bioinformatics, privacy policy/law, and systems security, Sina discovered 
that his heart lies in helping users of all capabilities use computer 
systems more effectively and efficiently.  He has worked in HCI full-time 
ever since. 


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