[Blindmath] {Spam?} Re: Reintroducing myself and beta test opportunity for new STEM accessibility service.

Tue Feb 7 11:11:21 UTC 2017

Hi Lucas,

That’s great news.

I am glad you are also committed to use your computer science knowledge to enhance STEM accessibility. I believe this field has plenty of work to be done.

Daniel 
PS: Though I am honoured and thanks for the credits, I do not have my doctorate yet. So feel free to simply call me Daniel. 
> On 7 Feb 2017, at 01:48, Lucas Nadolskis via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Dr. Hajas.
> Thank you for your email, I am certainly sending an email to the IRIS developers.
> 
> I am really glade with your idea in a personal way. The reason that I decided to have a major I’m computer science is to use technology to help other blind students specially in the field of science.
> Also I am from Brazil, and there is almost impossible for a blind student to take a science or engineering class due to our lack of accessible technologies or trained people to help on those subjects.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Best regards.
> 
> Lucas.
> 
>> On Feb 6, 2017, at 4:25 PM, Dániel Hajas via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Lucas, Zach,
>> 
>> Lucas, thanks for your quick introduction. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to help as an undergraduate, especially with the great qualifications and skills you have been gathering during your degree. In fact, I would be happy if you could help with trying out IRIS and letting the Grapheel team know if you think it would assist you during your science learning, and if not, how it could be changed to be more useful. It’s great you’ve done physics and chemistry. IRIS currently supports maths, physics, and to a lower extent biology and chemistry. However, in the near future, computer science and finances support should be added.
>> 
>> If you are happy to try IRIS, either let me know, or even better if you drop a line to contact at grapheel.com <mailto:contact at grapheel.com>, and I am sure the IRIS developers will get back to you soon with details.
>> 
>> You really don’t need to thank me for proposing the initiative, I simply encountered challenges that I believe still need solutions, and we try to create these solutions in the best way we can.
>> 
>> Zach, thanks for the enthusiastic reply, I’ll get back to you on that in a private message, to save the list members some irrelevant reading. If you don’t hear from me in the next 1-2 days, please send me a reminder in a private mail.
>> 
>> Best wishes,
>> Daniel 
>> 
>>> On 6 Feb 2017, at 16:11, Lucas Nadolskis via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hello Dr. Hajas.
>>> 
>>> I am currently a student of computer  science at the University of Minnesota.
>>> I needed to take physics, and calculus   courses last year and I am currently taking chemistry and linear algebra.
>>> I encountered numerous issues either on the past and on the current semester on accessibility on  this area of study.
>>> 
>>> So first I want to thank you for this idea of making the study of science and engineering  more accessible for blind students.
>>> If you think that me as a undergraduate student may help on the project I would be extremely glade to help in any ways that i can.
>>> 
>>> Thank you again.
>>> 
>>> Best regards.
>>> 
>>> Lucas Nadolskis.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Feb 6, 2017, at 8:04 AM, Dániel Hajas via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Dear All,
>>>> 
>>>> Let me reintroduce myself, as probably the memory of my person faded on this list, since I have to confess, I haven’t been posting or regularly reading the conversation going on between the BlindMath list members, even though I am signed up for a number of years and always found the knowledge exchange of the list very valuable, supportive and a friendly place. Personal and work related pressure prevented me from participating in this community in the past year, year and a half, which I wish to change now and catch up with all the unread e-mails, contribute with anything I can to new topics. As part of my reintroduction, please also allow me to bring your attention to a new STEM accessibility service. You can read more about it as well, and if you wish to participate and help shaping the service  with your feedback and insights, please let the developer team or myself know about it.
>>>> 
>>>> Now to the point:
>>>> 
>>>> I am Daniel Hajas, a blind theoretical physicist at the University of Sussex, England; and founder of Grapheel, (www.grapheel.com) which is a initiative to enhance accessibility of science education for people with special needs, using a set of online services, hardware products and public engagement activities, partnering with other organisations to make scientific content more accessible.
>>>> 
>>>> As part of the Grapheel initiative, me and a small team are designing an online, science community based image description service (called IRIS) to enhance the study experience of blind and visually impaired students in their education. Initially we would like to focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education, but later expand to subjects at arts and humanities and support image descriptions of financial graphs, or wave form visualisations in music editing. 
>>>> 
>>>> As we are at a very early stage of development, we would highly appreciate insights and feedback from the blind community familiar with accessibility considerations and state-of-the-art products and services. In particular, I would be grateful if  members of  this community could test and advise us on how to improve the service (please read more about it below). We have a feature incomplete test version, which we run in closed beta but before adding newer and new features we believe could be useful, we wish to start engaging with experienced, early adapter users, such that we can essentially build IRIS together from ground up.
>>>> 
>>>> The service is very similar to initiatives such as, Be my eyes, Bespecular, TapTapSee and other; however, our service aims to focus specifically on educational needs, with a pool of volunteering experts at given academic disciplines.
>>>> 
>>>> How does IRIS work?
>>>> • blind or visually impaired (BVI) students upload an image of scientific content, graphs, diagrams.
>>>> • BVI students select a field of study (tag) e.g. physics, maths, chemistry etc. and a level of difficulty.
>>>> • BVI students can ask a specific question they would like to know about the figure.
>>>> • A pool of sighted volunteers with the necessary knowledge are assigned to groups of chosen disciplines based on their user settings of competency.
>>>> • When an image request is sent by a BVI student, the figure appears in a queue that all volunteers of a specific discipline can view and describe.
>>>> • If a request is accepted, the volunteer should give a description of the image based on provided guidelines.
>>>> • The recipient of the description can either accept the response, or ask for further clarification.
>>>> 
>>>> What will I need to do as a tester?
>>>> All you need to do is to log in whenever you can, upload a figure of scientific content, wait for the description and let us know what are the things you like, don’t like and suggest us new features you believe would be useful or could be done in a better way.
>>>> 
>>>> If you feel you would be happy and able to help us, please let us know by getting in touch on contact at grapheel.com. Then we will send you a URL to access the service, your username, password and a “How to get started” instruction. 
>>>> 
>>>> Best wishes,
>>>> Daniel 
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>>> 
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> 
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