[Blindmath] Math and science accessibility on tap for October 11 meeting at APH

[Noble,Stephen L.]

If you are planning to be in Louisville next month for the 2012 APH Annual Meeting, please plan to attend this special session.

STEM Accessibility Consortium
A Related Meeting to be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of Ex Officio Trustees and Special Guests of the American Printing House for the Blind, Inc.
http://www.aph.org/anmtg/2012/agenda.html

October 11, 2012
Galt House Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky

Using the model of the AFB Solutions Forum, this meeting will feature discussion of issues related to the development and delivery of accessible curricular content and student engagement in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) areas of the Core Curriculum.

The discussion panel will include some of the leading experts on STEM access from around the country:

- Ginny Grant and Fred Slone from Benetech will discuss the work of the federally-funded DIAGRAM Center to improve the way image and graphic content for accessible instructional materials (AIM) is produced and accessed. They will be giving special attention to DIAGRAM's focus on science and math materials and the products and prototypes they have in the pipeline, as well as some of the important operational lessons they have learned regarding making STEM content available in Bookshare.

- Dr. Greg Williams of Independence Science is a blind chemist. He will be demonstrating the Talking LabQuest and discussing their innovative work in accessibility to laboratories and hands-on research for blind students.

- Steve Jacobs is President of IDEAL Group, Inc., and has been in the computer industry for 37 years, including serving as President of IDEAL at NCR Corporation. He will discuss the new IDEAL ePub3 Reader, which is designed to be fully accessible, with full support for MathML and SVG.

- We will hear a report from Design Science about their latest advances in accessibility to mathematics via their new MathPlayer 3 software, as well as ongoing work to make MathType editing software more accessible to blind users. In addition, we'll hear about their plans, progress, and interim results from the joint research project led by Educational Testing Service to make math more accessible. These include work to make math speech more understandable, to make math in Word and in other browsers accessible, as well as adding support for refreshable braille displays.

This related meeting will be held in the Jones Room during Annual Meeting on Thursday, October 11, from 10:00 am until 12:00 pm at the Galt House Hotel.

Contact: Steve Noble, steve.noble at louisville.edu, 502-969-3088