Biography

 Chieko Asakawa joined IBM in 1985 after completing the computer science courses for the blind at Lighthouse Japan. She received a B.A. degree in English literature from Ottemon University in 1982, and a Ph.D in Engineering from The University of Tokyo in 2004. She is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan, the Information Processing Society of Japan, and IBM Academy of Technology. She has been supporting accessibility related open standards efforts, and she is currently serving as a co-general chair for the international conference for Web accessibility (W4A) 2010. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in 2003, and both within and outside of IBM, she has been actively working to help women engineers pursue technical careers. Chieko was appointed to IBM Fellow in 2009, IBM's most prestigious technical honor.

Abstract

Collaboration is the key to overcoming unprecedented technology challenges and to help improve the quality of life for people with accessibility issues.  An open, community-based research pilot project called Social Accessibility project has been progressing at IBM Research.  In the pilot, visually impaired users and volunteers have been collaborating to fix Web accessibility problems. This unique collaboration model harnesses the power of Internet users around the world to improve Web accessibility for visually impaired.  Dr. Chieko Asakawa will discuss the Social Accessibility research project and technologies innovated at IBM Research to help improve Web accessibility for the visually impaired and seniors.