In recognition of National Disability Awareness Month, we’re bringing in a special guest for our October meetup: Sina Bahram. Sina is an accomplished “universal design” and accessibility evangelist who greatly contributed to the implementation of NC State’s web accessibility policy. He also works with the Free Software Foundation, project GNU, on systemic accessibility matters such as the state of Linux accessibility, accessibility on the web, open source screen reader development, etc. Most recently, Sina helped bring to fruition a project in the country of Nepal, whereby a school is being opened to teach English, technology skills, and the principles of free software to blind students.
His passion for this field originally stems from the fact that he is mostly blind and he uses assistive technologies such as a screen reader to navigate various computer systems and devices. This is a great chance to see a screen reader in action (let’s see how a few of our UNC sites hold up!), learn about the latest thinking about web accessibility, and have your questions answered by an expert. Sina is known for having an engaging, interactive style so we’re going to have some fun.
Details
Location: Grad Student Center (http://gradschool.unc.edu/student/gsc/)
Date: Thursday, October 6
Time: 2:00p.m. – 3:30p.m.
More about Sina
Sina Bahram is currently pursuing a PhD in the department of computer science at North Carolina State University. His field of research is human computer interaction (HCI). Sina’s primary interest is on the dynamic translation of interfaces, with an emphasis on innovative environments being used by persons with visual impairment (PWVI). His other research interests focus on using AI inspired techniques to solve real world user centric problems. When he is not busy with his academic pursuits, Sina greatly enjoys working with small high-tech startup companies, and loves trying to stay on the bleeding edge of technology. After experimenting in the fields of bioinformatics, privacy policy/law, and systems security, Sina discovered that his passion involves helping users of all capabilities use computer systems more effectively and efficiently. He has worked in HCI full-time ever since.
As an undergraduate, Sina won the Donald L. Bitzer Creativity Award for his accessibility related research work on ProofChecker (an application for the modeling and exploration of deterministic finite automata and context free grammars). Working with a sighted friend and colleague, Sina helped make it possible for a totally blind user to create, explore, and define the language of a finite automata in what was previously a fully graphical and inaccessible application. Also, during his undergraduate years, Sina received his College of Engineering’s Phoenix award for scholastic achievement. Sina Bahram is a Google scholar, as well as a recipient of the National Federation of the Blind’s national scholarship program.