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“Blindness, Technology, and Multimodal Reading”
Wellcome Collection, London
June 27-28, 2014
Deadline: February 1, 2014
“Blindness, Technology, and Multimodal Reading” is a two-day
conference focusing on the relationship among visual disabilities, reading
formats, and multimodal literacy from historical as well as present-day
perspectives. It brings together internationally renowned figures from the
humanities, sciences, and public sector to discuss technological innovations
designed to make reading material accessible to blind and other print-disabled
readers. The conference will involve researchers working on a wide range of
topics including embossed printing, talking books, text-to-speech reading
machines, refreshable braille displays, screen readers, and electronic
note-takers. Questions to be considered include: How can visual material
be translated into media accessible to other senses including touch, hearing,
scent, and taste? How are new techniques of representation linked to new forms
of cognition and community? What lessons have been learned about the practice
of reading from historical experiments with print access? In today’s
digital environments, how does multimodal literacy encompass both blind and
sighted readers?
Keynote speakers include Georgina Kleege (Berkeley), Pat
Beech (RNIB), Julie Anderson (Kent), George Williams (South Carolina Upstate),
and Selina Mills (writer and journalist).
We invite proposals for 15-20 minute presentations. Please
email abstracts of 250-300 words and a short cv or bio to Matt Rubery (m.rubery@qmul.ac.uk) and Mara Mills (mmills@nyu.edu) by February 1, 2014.
This event is generously supported by the Wellcome Trust and
will take place at the Wellcome Collection in central London, near several
museums, archives, and other centers at the forefront of preservation efforts
related to the history of blindness.
For more information on the venue visit: http://www.wellcomecollection.org/
For more on the conferences visit: http://blindnessconference.wordpress.com/
