Announcing September 12 event at FCC: "Improving Accessibility for the General Public"

Event page: www.fcc.gov/events/accessibility-innovation-initiative-speaker-series-presents-yevgen-borodin-improving-accessib<http://www.fcc.gov/events/accessibility-innovation-initiative-speaker-series-presents-yevgen-borodin-improving-accessib>



On Thursday, September 12, 2013, the FCC's Accessibility & Innovation Initiative will host Dr. Yevgen Borodin as part of an ongoing Speaker Series. His presentation, from 10 AM to 12 noon, is called "Improving Accessibility for the General Public." Additionally, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM, the event will feature demonstrations of accessible technology solutions related to topics of the presentation.  The morning presentation and afternoon demos will occur in the Commission Meeting Room and Technology Experience Center, respectively, located at FCC headquarters - 445 12th St. SW in Washington, DC.



Presentation Summary

Very few technologies have been developed to be universally accessible from the start. While technologies are advancing at a rapid pace, their accessibility is often an afterthought, with the third-party assistive tools always lagging behind the latest innovations. But is there anything we can do about this?



In this talk, Dr. Borodin will give a historic overview of how people have been "chasing the moving target," on the example of Web accessibility. He will examine the strategies that could be pursued to keep up with the chase. Finally, he will propose a solution that could help win this race.



Speaker Bio

Dr. Yevgen Borodin is a Research Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stony Brook University. He is well known for his research on computational methods and non-visual interfaces for improving Web Accessibility. He is also the President and CEO of Charmtech Labs LLC, a start-up company that he co-founded to develop a universally accessible web browsing assistant called Capti, an early version of which is available in the iTunes App Store.



Dr. Borodin is the recipient of almost four million dollars in U.S. federal research grants. He has co-authored over 30 publications on various aspects of web accessibility, receiving several best papers awards. He defended his Ph.D. dissertation on "Bridging the Web Accessibility Divide" at Stony Brook University, where he received the President's Award for Distinguished Doctoral Students (2010). He was the 1st place winner of the 2007 ACM International Graduate Student Research Competition. He has served on program committees for numerous conferences and journals, and he is co-chairing the International Web for All Conference in Seoul, Korea (W4A'14).



Public Participation

The agenda includes time for questions from the public, either by email with the aiispeaker@fcc.gov<mailto:aiispeaker@fcc.gov> address or by Twitter with the #aiispeaker<https://twitter.com/search?q=%23aiispeaker> hashtag. Audio/Video coverage of the morning presentation (but not afternoon demos) will be broadcast live with open captions over the Internet from www.fcc.gov/live<http://www.fcc.gov/live>.



The webcast is free to the public and does not require pre-registration.



Pre-registration and Accommodations

Pre-registration for in-person attendance is not required but highly encouraged. Please RSVP to aiispeaker@fcc.gov<mailto:aiispeaker@fcc.gov>.



The meeting is open to the public, and the site is fully accessible to people using wheelchairs or other mobility aids. Open captioning and assistive listening devices will be provided on site.



Other reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities are available upon request. The request should include a detailed description of the accommodation needed and contact information. Please provide as much advance notice as possible; last minute requests will be accepted, but may not be possible to fill. To request an accommodation, send an email to fcc504@fcc.gov<mailto:fcc504@fcc.gov> or call the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice), 202-418-0432 (TTY).