Title: "My accessibility Marathon: No progress without pain"

Date: June 16th, 2021
Time: 12:00 (noon, Istanbul Time)
Zoom Registration

Abstract:
A marathon is roughly 26 miles in length; I started my PhD roughly 22 years ago. If a year of my life as a researcher is like a mile in a marathon, then I still have four more miles to run to get to the finish line.
There have been numerous changes in the way I work as a blind person in a visual discipline over those twenty years. I was hugely dependent on assistance from sighted people for the majority of my research activities back then; today, I use sighted assistants because my research work often reaches into those areas where blind people still do not have access to the information we need. It is my hope that by developing more tools to improve our access, that more blind people will be able to pursue education and research in scientific disciplines, especially those disciplines that are rich in data.
Crucial improvements into the way I can work have made production of teaching material and research contributions much easier. I used to need sighted assistance to find mistakes in my work; I can find most of them for myself today. I still seek advice from sighted assistants on the cosmetic aspects of my work, but even that reliance is reducing.