Chris Atchison
Dr. Chris Atchison is a Professor of Geoscience Education in the School of Education and Department of Geology at the University of Cincinnati, and the Founder of the International Association for Geoscience Diversity (www.TheIAGD.org). Atchison advocates for a more accessible and inclusive shift in traditional methods of teaching and learning where students and geoscientists with disabilities are provided opportunities for active engagement and participation along accessible pathways to the geoscience workforce. His research is based on the intentional development of inclusive communities of learning in the classroom, laboratory, and field studies and the implementation of universally designed instructional strategies. The practical outcomes of Atchison’s work reach students, instructors, and practitioners across all field-focused science disciplines through science and education publications, presentations, workshops, and accessible field experiences.
Sarahelizabeth Baguhn
Sarahelizabeth Baguhn, PhD has taught Assistive Technology skills for a public-school district and to adults in the community as a private contractor. She holds ACVREP’s CATIS & COMS as well as a Wisconsin TVI license. Her current research is focused on establishing reliability and validity of comprehensive O&M assessment tools. When not researching or teaching electronic travel aids or other classes for WMU, she enjoys hiking the Appalachian Trail with friends, geocaching, and Pokémon Go. Dr. Baguhn serves on the board of directors for the Michigan Blind Athletic Association, the subject matter expert committee for Assistive Technology with ACVREP, as well as the Advisory Council for Audio Description.
Jennifer Bliss
Jennifer Bliss is the STEM Consultant for the Iowa Educational Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired (IESBVI) where she collaborates with Iowa’s teachers of the visually impaired and mainstream classroom teachers in supporting Iowa’s students. Jennifer was a middle school science teacher for 14 years in Vinton, Iowa—the former home of the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School. The braille school students who were mainstreamed into her science classroom inspired her to change her educational path. Creating environments where VI students can work alongside their sighted piers in learning and understanding STEM topics is the focus of her work.
Diane Brauner
Diane Brauner is an educational accessibility consultant collaborating with various educational groups and app developers. She splits her time between managing the Perkins eLearning website, Paths to Technology, presenting workshops on a national level and working on accessibility-related projects. Diane’s personal mission is to support developers and educators in creating and teaching accessible educational tools which enable students with visual impairments to flourish in the 21st century classroom. Diane has 25+ years as a Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist (COMS), working primarily with preschool and school-age students.
Geoff & Marla Bump
We are parents of a 22 yo young woman who has bilateral Peter’s Anomaly and microphthalmia. We have advocated for her and her peers to have equal access to a quality education since she was young. As a family, we enjoy traveling, the arts and cooking (well some more than others).
Ying Ting Chiu
Dr. Ying-Ting Chiu believes in Science for All. She has a Ph.D. in Teaching and Learning, and her work has been driven by her passion for social justice in education. Dr. Chiu is committed to promoting equitable access to science education for students with disabilities, particularly for students with visual impairments. Her research interests include science identity, conceptual understanding, inclusive curriculum design, and hands-on material adaptation.
Frances Mary D’Andrea
Frances Mary D’Andrea, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining the faculty at Pitt, she was an educational consultant specializing in literacy issues for students with visual impairments, and was an adjunct instructor at several U.S. universities. She became a teacher of students with visual impairments in 1982 and has taught in specialized schools, resource rooms, and as an itinerant teacher. From 1995-2005, she worked at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), and helped establish their National Literacy Center. Dr. D’Andrea has served as AF-B’s representative to the Braille Authority of North America (BANA) since 1998. She is currently chair of BANA’s General Committee on UEB, and served as BANA Chair 2012-2015. She has published numerous articles and books, conducted numerous workshops and presentations both nationally and internationally. She serves on many committees and national task forces related to the education of students with visual impairments.
Jenna Gorlewicz
Jenna L. Gorlewicz received the B.S. in mechanical engineering from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2008 and the PhD degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2013. She is currently faculty in Mechanical Engineering at Saint Louis University (SLU), where she directs the Collaborative Haptics, Robotics, and Mech-atronics (CHROME) Lab. Her research interests are in haptic and multimodal interfaces, learning technologies, medical devices and robotics, engineering education, and entrepreneurship. Dr. Gorlewicz received the National Science Foundation CAREER award, and is leading a new initiative at SLU centered around the people and technology horizon. She is also co-founder of an educational technology company, Vital, which is bridging the digital graphics accessibility gap in STEM education.
Tina Herzberg
Dr. Tina Herzberg is a Professor and Coordinator of the Visual Impairment Program at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Dr. Herzberg’s research focuses on braille literacy, assessment of students with visual impairments, tactile graphics, and efficacy of continuing professional development. She is also currently serving as the principal investigator of the federally funded braille training grant, Project INSPIRE: Increasing the STEM Potential of Individuals Who Read Braille. She is a co-author of the Pearson Nemeth Curriculum and has also served as a member of the Braille Formats Technical Committee for the Braille Authority of North America since 2014. Prior to her arrival at USC Upstate in 2007, she served as a general education math and English teacher, an itinerant teacher of students with visual impairment, and specialist/team leader for a regional service center in Texas.
Rosanne Hoffmann
Rosanne Hoffmann holds an MA and PhD in biological sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has developed STEM products for students with visual impairments at the American Printing House for the Blind for the past 15 years including the DNA Twist, DNA-RNA Kit, Protein Synthesis Kit, Build-A-Cell, and various tactile graphics compilations. Using her 20 years of experience teaching college level biology at the University of Louisville and tenure at APH, her goal is to help level the playing field for students with vision impairments by combining her scientific knowledge with the principles of universal design.
Richard Ladner
Richard E. Ladner is a Professor Emeritus in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. After a long career in theoretical computer science research he moved to the area of accessible computing research which is an important subarea of human-computer interaction (HCI). He has done research on tactile graphics, web accessibility, and accessible programming. His research continues, but he also leads projects to bring more people with disabilities into computing fields. He leads the NSF-funded AccessComputing Alliance that helps computing students at all levels complete their degrees in computing fields. He also co-leads the NSF-funded AccessCSforAll that helps prepare K-12 teachers to be include students with disabilities in their computing courses. He is a winner of the 2018 Champion of Computer Science – Accessibility award presented by the Computer Science Teachers Association and Code.org.
Sara Larkin
Sara Larkin taught high school math, computer programming, and computer networking for 18 years. Since 2007, she has been the statewide math consultant for the Iowa Educational Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired. She supports TVIs, classroom teachers, and para educators across the state of Iowa and provides trainings on Nemeth Code, accessible math related technology, tactile graphics, abacus, math teaching strategies for the blind, and more. She is a co-author of the Pearson Nemeth Curriculum and a consultant for Project INSPIRE: Increasing the STEM Potential of Individuals Who Read Braille.
Xinyue Lu
Xinyue Lu is a Ph.D. candidate in multilingual language education and a writing center consultant at The Ohio State University. She is strongly interested in the diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in world language education, and she is dedicated to making language learning accessible to and representative of all learners and educators.
Thomas Madura
Dr. Thomas Madura is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at San Jose State University (SJSU). He is a theoretical and computational astrophysicist that specializes in the study of massive stars, and astronomy outreach and education for students with visual impairments (VI). He is currently the PI of a NSF Innovative Technology Ex-periences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) grant “Career Exploration Lab: 3D Printing and STEM Engagement for High School Students with Visual Impairments and their Educators.”
Emily Moore
Dr. Emily Moore is Director of Research & Accessibility for PhET Interactive Simulations, in the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Moore leads efforts to increase inclusion of learners with disabilities through inclusively designed interactives, which includes the design, imple-mentation, and study of accessible auditory, visual, and haptic displays, and alternative input to support access to simulations by learners with sensory, mobility, or cognitive disabilities. She designs and advises on research, data collection, and analysis across various instructional contexts and has extensive experience in simulation co-design, qualitative (e.g., discourse analysis, interaction analysis) and quantitative (e.g., data analytics) data methods, and pedagogical use of simulations. In her work, Dr. Moore has also directed teacher professional development videos, co-taught popular MOOCs on accessibility and multimodal design, and has co-designed numerous classroom activities with middle school, high school, and college teachers.
Susan Osterhaus
Susan A. Osterhaus taught secondary math for 29 years at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired before becoming the statewide math consultant in their Outreach Program 13 years ago. She shares her experience freely with colleagues at TSBVI, throughout Texas, nationally, and internationally through presentations, workshops, videos, publications, and curriculum development, and she is also involved in technological research and development as a consultant, field tester, and net worker. Susan is a long-time member of the BANA Nemeth and Tactile Graphics Committees. She is a co-author of Nemeth at a Glance, a co-author of the Pearson Nemeth Curriculum, and a consultant for Project INSPIRE: Increasing the STEM Potential of Individuals Who Read Braille.
Cecelia Peirano
Cecelia Peirano is a 5th/6th grade teacher at the Ohio State School for the Blind. She has taught students with visual impairments for over 40 years in both the classroom and math and science camps. Cecelia has participated in numerous research studies and grants in the STEM fields. She co-leads the 3D Printing Model Club at OSSB.
She has been awarded the AFB Arlene Cohen Art of Teaching Award, AERO Judy Cernkovich Excellence in Education Award, AERO Kenneth Cozier Memorial Award, and was named the Ohio 2020 District 6 Teacher of the Year.
Katie Robinson
Katie Robinson, holds an Associate of Science in Networking Systems Administration. She has worked in accessible materials production for eleven years and is a Materials Production Specialist at the Assistive Technology & Accessible Educational Materials Center (AT&AEM) at the Ohio Center for Autism and Low incidence (COALI). Katie is a Certified Literary Braille Transcriber in both English Braille American Edition (EBAE) and Unified English Braille. She is a regular guest speaker at the Ohio State University College of Education Inclusion classes, sharing her experiences as a disabled individual in the K-12 education system. In her free time, she enjoys loom knitting, sewing, reading and some video games.
L. Penny Rosenblum
Dr. Rosenblum is the owner of Vision for Independence, LLC and through her company consults on multiple projects in the field. Previously she was the Director of Research at the American Foundation for the Blind. Prior to joining AFB in January 2020, Dr. Rosenblum was a Research Professor at the University of Arizona. From 2012-2019 she ran two Institute of Education Sciences grants focused on building STEM skills of pre-algebra students. As a result, the “AnimalWatch Products” are available through the American Printing House for the Blind for all to use. Dr. Rosenblum is a consultant for Project INSPIRE which increases the capacity of professionals to prepare STEM materials for braille readers and use appropriate teaching methods and materials. The project also has a component for students who are braille readers.
Neil Soiffer
Dr. Soiffer received a B.S. in math from MIT and a M.S. and PhD in Computer Science from U. C. Berkeley. He was a member of Tektronix’s Computer Research Lab, where he created experimental math computation systems, math editors, and tools for embedded systems. Dr. Soiffer moved to Wolfram Research, where he was responsible for a number of user elements that are part of Mathematica, including the WYSIWYG math editor and programmability of Mathematica’s notebook interface. He joined Design Science in 2003 and worked on math accessibility in their MathPlayer product. In 2017 he formed Talking Cat Software and has consulted for a number of companies. He helped create Mathshare, Benetch’s accessible tool that allows students to show their work in solving math problems. Dr. Soiffer is a principal architect of MathML and currently chairs the W3C MathML Refresh Community Group. He chaired the MathML in DAISY committee, is a member of the PDF/UA and EPUB 3 working groups, and was a NIMAS board member. He was awarded an NSF SBIR grant to make electronic documents that contain math accessible and along with ETS, was awarded a IES grant to make school materials containing math accessible.
Andreas Stefik
Andreas Stefik is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For the last decade, he has been creating technologies that make it easier for people, including those with disabilities, to write computer software. He helped establish the first national educational infrastructure for blind or visually impaired students to learn computer science and invented the first evidence-based programming language, Quorum. The design of Quorum is created from data derived through methodologies similar to those used in the medical community. He has been a principal investigator on 5 NSF-funded grants, many of which related to accessible graphics and computer science education. Finally, he was honored with the 2016 White House Champions of Change award and the Expanding CS Opportunities award from Code.org and the Computer Science Teachers Association.
Ed Summers
Ed Summers is a blind software engineer and an accessibility specialist. He has a B.S. in Computer Science and 25 years of professional experience as a software developer and a development manager. Ed’s personal mission is to enable people with disabilities to realize their full potential in the classroom and the 21st century knowledge economy. He fulfills that mission as the Director of Accessibility at SAS, the market leader in analytics software and services. The SAS accessibility team enables people of all abilities to access the power of analytics. Ed also serves on the Advisory Council for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the North Carolina Board of Education Advisory Council for the Governor Morehead School for the Blind.
Cary Supalo
Dr. Supalo has been blind since he was seven years old and received his Ph.D. from Penn State University in chemistry in 2010. He currently works as part of the accessibility team at the Educational Testing Service located in Princeton, New Jersey. His current responsi-bilities include the evaluation of access technologies that are commercially available and under development and their possible impact on the high stakes assessment industry. He conducts data collection instrument design on several state department of education sup-ported projects that involve students with print disabilities. Prior to his time at ETS, he served as a full-time research scientist in the Department of Chemistry at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. There he conducted chemical education research with Dr. George Bodner in how students with visual impairments perceive visual concepts in chemistry. Dr. Supalo also served as an assistant professor of chemistry and director of the chemistry teacher education program at Illinois State University from 2012-2014. There he taught general chemistry and upper level chemistry teacher education methods courses. His research interests at ISU included the development of laboratory curriculum that was multi-sensory in nature. The results of this work was reported in conference proceedings at American Chemical Society national meetings. He has been an active member of the National Federation of the Blind. He has conducted many hands-on science programs on both the state and national levels in the NFB. His interest in the development of new talking laboratory technologies through his firm Independence Science has served to be a valuable dissemination vehicle for these new innovative technologies for students who are blind or visually impaired.
Sean Tikkun
Sean Tikkun, PhD, TVI, COMS, CATIS is an assistant professor at North Carolina Central University in the Visual Impairments Training Program (VITP). He spent 13 years as a K-12 educator in the areas of Mathematics, Visual impairments and Orientation & Mobility before moving to higher education. Sean is an Apple Distinguished Educator and Intel Essential Master Educator. He was a fellow with the National Leadership Consortium in Sensory Disabilities (NLCSD) while completing his doctoral studies. Sean serves as a subject matter expert for the CATIS through ACVREP. He was also awarded the Distinguish Service Award from Illinois AERBVI for his work on both the Unified English Braille Online Training and Project VITALL workshops designed to meet the needs of professionals in the field.
Lisa Wadors Verne
Lisa is Director, Education Research and Development at Benetech, a nonprofit that leverages technology to make the written world and STEM education accessible to students with disabilities. She serves as the Project Director for the DIAGRAM Center, a federally-funded R&D Center that has been advancing the use of technology to ensure full access to education for students with disabilities, particularly in STEM, in the last 10 years. She is co-producer of the DIAGRAM Report, an annual brief about emerging technologies and their promise for kids with disabilities. Lisa has been the Strategy Co-Leader for Parent and Consumer Involvement for the federally funded (department of Ed-OSEP) BUILD Center, which was about implementing Bookshare, the largest library of accessible ebooks accessible for students with accessibilities impacting reading. She was coordinating all parent and partner-related responsibilities for the BUILD Center. She was also the project lead for Benetech’s “3D Printing: New Educational Opportunities for Students with Print Disabilities” project funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Lisa also serves on the advisory boards for both the Center for Applied Special Technology CISL project and the STEM Innovation for Inclusion in Early Education (STEMI2E2) Center and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, UNC-Chapel Hill Lisa has a doctorate in Special Education and Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University, Joint Doctoral program with a focus on teachers’ beliefs about including children with special needs in typically developing classrooms. With nearly two decades in Educational research and application, Dr. Wadors Verne has particular expertise in special education policy and law, inclusion, and family and school collaboration. She was also an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University for over a decade teaching preservice and in-service teachers about inclusion. Lisa has spoken about accessible educational materials and inclusive practices at many notable confer-ences around the globe.
Greg Williams
Greg was born with glaucoma and at the age of five had only limited light perception. He has BS degrees in chemistry and math from Indiana University and a PhD in computational chemistry from the University of Cambridge. He also has experience teaching high school chemistry and physics. Greg has worked in STEM and web accessibility since 2012 as a consultant, a post-doctoral fellow at Purdue University, and as an employee of Independence Science.
Kim Zebehazy
Kim Zebehazy is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia co-directing the Masters in Blindness and Visual Impairment and directing the Graduate Certificate in Orientation and Mobility. Her research interests include student with visual impairments’ access to and strategies for reading graphics such as tactile graphics and promoting problem solving and thinking skills in students with visual impairments.
