People and Organizations that Make up the RtF Initiative
Who we are - Diverse participation
Raising the Floor brings together like-minded people from many different disciplines and backgrounds who share this goal under whatever label. This includes people from software development, academia, industry (mainstream and Assistive Technology), consumers, non-governmental organizations, governments and activists.
RtF is a meritocracy that allows anyone to learn, increase their skills, and rise to the top of the areas they work in. Just one of the benefits of RtF is that it allows new participants, particularly those who are also users of RtF technologies, to develop their skills and opportunities while advancing RtF.
The strength of RtF is the calibre of the people and programs that make up the RtF initiative and their common objective of ensuring access to the Web for all.
The Co-Founders
Jim Fruchterman is a technology entrepreneur and former rocket scientist who has founded two of the foremost optical character recognition companies and developed successful social enterprises. Jim co-founded Calera Recognition Systems in 1982. Calera developed character recognition that allowed computers to read virtually all printed text.
In 1989, Jim founded Arkenstone, a nonprofit social enterprise, to produce reading machines for the disabled community based on the Calera technology. Following the sale of the Arkenstone product line in 2000, Jim used all the resulting capital to fund Benetech, with an explicit goal of using the power of technology to serve humanity.
Jim has also been active in public service, with two stints on U.S. federal advisory committees. He is a MacArthur fellow and was named an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur in 2003 by the Schwab Foundation and continues to participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Benetech received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship under Jim's leadership. Jim has also received numerous awards from major disability groups and the American Library Association in recognition of his efforts to make literary works accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.
To contact Jim directly, send an email to Info@RaisingTheFloor.net with [ATTN JIM] in the subject.
Gregg C. Vanderheiden is a professor of Industrial and Biomedical Engineering, and founder and director of Trace R&D Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has worked in technology and disability for more than 35 years and currently directs the NIDRR Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Information Technology Access, and co-directs the RERC on Telecommunications Access (joint with Gallaudet University).
Gregg pioneered in the field of Augmentative Communication (a name taken from his writings), working with people having physical, visual, hearing and cognitive disabilities. His work with the computer industry led to many of the access features that are standard today. For example, access features developed by Dr. Vanderheiden and his team (e.g., StickyKeys, MouseKeys, etc.) have been built into the Macintosh OS since 1987, OS/2 and the UNIX X Window system since 1993, and more than half a dozen were built into Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and now System 7. His work is also found in built in access features in ATMs, Point of Sale terminals, and cross-disability accessible Automated Postal Stations, Amtrak ticket machines, and airline terminals.
Dr. Vanderheiden has served on numerous professional, industry and government advisory and planning committees including those for the FCC, NSF, NIH, VA, DED, GSA, NCD, Access Board and White House. He is co-chair of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines working group and editor of the HFES software accessibility standard. He has received over 30 awards for his work on technology and disability include the ACM Social Impact Award for the Human-Computer Interaction Community, the Ron Mace Award, the Access award from AFB, the Yuri Rubinski Memorial World Wide Web Award (WWW6), and the Isabelle and Leonard H. Goldenson Award for Outstanding Research in Medicine and Technology (UCPA).
To contact Gregg directly, send an email to Info@RaisingTheFloor.net with [ATTN GREGG] in the subject.
Early Participants
Raising the Floor needs and has drawn interest from a wide range of different individuals. Some of the early participants and supporters of the Raising the Floor effort include:
NOTE: Since this list was compiled by combining lists we are sure there are errors. If you spot an error (of commission or omission) please let us know by sending an email to info@raisingthefloor.net and put [Participation] in the subject line. If you are interested in joining in see Get Involved.
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Aries Arditi | Lighthouse International |
| Chieko Asakawa | IBM Research |
| Jeff Bigham | Univ. of Washington |
| Alan W. Black | Carnegie Mellon Univ., Language Technologies Institute |
| Cathy Bodine | U of Colorado, Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities |
| Judy Brewer | WAI W3C |
| Sheryl Burgstahler | Univ. of Washington |
| Ben Caldwell | Trace Center University of Wisconsin - Madison |
| Kevin Carey | RNIB UK Humanity |
| Vint Cerf | |
| Charles Chen | Google - Fire Vox |
| Wendy Chisholm | Consultant |
| Curtis Chong | NFB |
| Frank DeRuyter | Duke University AAC RERC |
| Roberto Ellero | International Webmasters Association / HTML Writers Guild |
| Pier Luigi Emiliani | Director Institute of Applied Physics, NRC, Italy |
| Neal Ewers | Ravenswood Productions |
| Lainey Feingold | Law Office of Lainey Feingold |
| Jim Fruchterman | Benetech |
| Krzysztof Gajos | Harvard University |
| Larry Goldberg | WGBH |
| Elena Gómez | Technosite |
| Jon Gunderson | University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign |
| Vicki Hanson | IBM and Univ. of Dundee |
| Katie Haritos-Shea | Consultant |
| Chris Hofstader | Consultant |
| Steve Jacobs | Ideal |
| Simon Judge | OATSoft |
| Hiroshi Kawamura | DAISY Consortium |
| Maureen Kaine-Krolak | Consultant |
| George Kerscher | Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic |
| Peter Korn | Sun & AEGIS |
| Richard Ladner | Univ. of Washington |
| Axel Leblois | G3ICT The Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs |
| Seongil Lee | Sungkyunkwan University – Korea |
| Steve Lee | OATSoft |
| Clayton Lewis | U of Colorado, Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities |
| Larry L. Lewis Jr. | Flying Blind |
| Mats Lundälv | DART, AEGIS, OATSoft and Conceptcoding.org |
| Jamal Mazrui | FCC |
| Joseph McNulty | Helen Keller National Center |
| Martin McKay | TextHelp |
| Mari Ostendorf | Univ. of Washington |
| Ed Price | Georgia Tech |
| TV Raman | |
| P.L. Patrick Rau | Inst of Human Factors & Ergo. , Dept of Indust. Engr. Tsinghua University, China |
| Brad Ruderman | Trace Center University of Wisconsin- Madison |
| Martin Sabry | aIdeas |
| Janina Sajka | Consultant |
| Roberto Scano | International Webmasters Association / HTML Writers Guild |
| Richard Schwerdtfeger | IBM |
| Andrew Sears | UMBC |
| Lisa Seeman | UBAccess |
| Rebecca Smith | Trace Center University of Wisconsin- Madison |
| Hironobu Takagi | IBM Research |
| Jim Tobias | Inclusive Technologies |
| Jutta Treviranus | U of Toronto Adaptive Technology Resource Centre |
| José Ángel Martínez Usero | INREDIS Project |
| Gregg Vanderheiden | Trace Center University of Wisconsin - Madison |
| Will Walker | Sun |
| Jerry Weisman | Assistive Technology Solutions |
| Norman Williams | Gallaudet University |
| Shigeru Yamauchi | Assistive Technology Development Organization |
| Jerry Zhu | UW Madison Computer Science (text to picture) |
Sponsors
Raising the Floor is currently funded directly by the the following sponsors
- National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) , US Dept of Education under grant #H133E080022.
- Adobe Foundation - through a generous gift to support the initiation and organization of Raising the Floor and its teams.
In addition, RtF is funded indirectly through the support of its many participants. Indirect funding for RtF efforts by its participants includes the following:
- National Science Foundation - Support for several partner projects, including the University of Washington's WebAnywhere project, the University of Wisconsin's Text-to-Picture Synthesis project, and many others.
- United Nations - Support for the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT).
- Mozilla Foundation - Joint funding with Benetech to build a DAISY eBook reader for use with the Firefox web browser, support for the Fire Vox and Bookshare projects.
- Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) of the U.S. Department of Education - Support for the Bookshare for Education project.
- Skoll Foundation and Omidyar Network - General support of Benetech.
If your work contributes to RtF and your funding agency is not named here, please let us know by sending an email to contribution@RaisingTheFloor.net with [Participation] in the subject line.
