[Nfbk] Math and science access technology for blind students - free session on October 8 in Louisville

[steve.noble at louisville.edu]

Reminder about the special session on Thursday...

[Apologies if you receive this announcement more than once.]

Anyone is welcome to attend the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) access meeting next week in Louisville, which is described below. There is no need to pre-register for this meeting, and it is free and open to the public. It will be held in the Park Suite, which is on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Louisville (the APH conference hotel) on Thursday, October 8 at 10:00 AM. The meeting is held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the American Printing House for the Blind, but the STEM meeting is open to anyone.

* We would like to thank Freedom Scientific for sponsoring the 2015 STEM Consortium Meeting. http://www.freedomscientific.com/

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Consortium Meeting; October 8, 2014, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Park Suite, Hyatt Regency Hotel, 311 South Fourth Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202
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 for blind and visually-impaired students 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:
- Ron Miller, Blindness Hardware Product Manager for Freedom Scientific, will demonstrate the new math support capabilities of JAWS 16, which allows complex mathematical equations in web pages to be spoken and navigated.
- Fred Slone, Director of Operations for Benetech, will give an update on accessible STEM-related developments being led by Benetech's DIAGRAM Center, including MathML Cloud and the Accessible Image Sample Book.
- Dave Schleppenbach is CEO of gh, and will be joined by Wunji Lau, Technical and Marketing Consultant for gh. The MathHear software from gh, LLC provides teachers and students an easy-to-learn system for reading, hearing, composing, and solving math equations. This presentation will demonstrate the software's features, including full voicing (using a simplified MathSpeak format), keyboard controls, and possibilities for use in both traditional and online classrooms.
- Larry Skutchan is Director of Technology Product Research at the American Printing House for the Blind will share information about some significant developments in STEM content including two accessible TI calculators and an online Nemeth tutorial.
- Steve Noble is a Research Consultant and Lecturer at the University of Louisville, as well as Content Specialist for Mathematics and Science at Bridge Multimedia. He will discuss the results of the recently concluded research project led by Educational Testing Service (ETS), "Expanding Audio Access to Mathematics Expressions by Students with Visual Impairments via MathML." He will also demo the NVDA math audio navigation capabilities in Word documents using MathType and MathPlayer4 which was used by students as part of the project and has now been released.

This related meeting will be held in the Park Suite during the APH Annual Meeting on Thursday, October 8, from 10:00 am until 12:00 pm at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Details on the APH Annual Meeting can be found at this link: http://www.aph.org/annual-meeting/2015/

For more information of the STEM Consortium meeting, please contact: Steve Noble, steve.noble at louisville.edu, 502-969-3088