So much of the conversation about the COVID-19 pandemic has been about trends: curves and how to flatten them, models, exponential growth, and so on. These are usually conveyed visually, which means people who cannot see the graphs are excluded from the information driving our discourse, even if the raw data are screen-readable. With his A11Y COVID-19 project, Dr.
Students from Everett Middle School joined us for a day of learning what it is like to be a scientist. The Field Trip was organized by IGNITE Worldwide!, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring girls to consider careers in STEM. The girls toured laboratories, met with scientists and worked on case studies. The field trip was part of the Institute's ongoing activities to increase STEM participation.
We congratulate Dr. James Coughlan, Dr. Huiying Shen, and Brandon Biggs, MDes on winning the Dr. Arthur I. Karshmer Award for Assistive Technology Research with their publication that aims to harness smartphone-based technology to query information about a multitude of objects in users' daily lives.
Santani Teng, an Associate Scientist at Smith-Kettlewell, has been awarded a three-year grant from The E. Matilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind and Visually Impaired to study the neural processes of echolocation.
TGH (short for “Tactile Graphics Helper”) is a free iOS app from The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute that makes tactile graphics available for people with visual impairments. When you point your finger at a feature of interest on a tactile graphic, the app issues text-to-speech information about the feature.
The app is available on the Apple App Store, and instructions on how to use it are here.
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute mourns the loss of our colleague and friend, Dr. William F. Crandall, Jr. Bill, as he was known, passed away over the weekend at his family home in St. Simons Island, Georgia.