Welcome to the website for the “Blindness, Technology, and Multimodal Reading” conference taking place in London on June 27-28, 2014. This will be the first conference to focus 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. Historical artifacts related to blindness will be on display from the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Blind Veterans UK, British Library, Wellcome Library, and EMI Group Archive Trust.
Keynote speakers include Georgina Kleege (Berkeley), Julie Anderson (Kent), George Williams (South Carolina Upstate), Selina Mills (author and journalist), and Clive Gardiner & Claire Maxwell (RNIB).
The event is funded by the Wellcome Trust. The conference organizers are Matthew Rubery (QMUL) and Mara Mills (NYU).
This event is open to the public and free to attend. Please contact Matthew Rubery (m.rubery@qmul.ac.uk) for more details.
The photograph at the top of this webpage shows Margaret Hogan listening to the optophone, a mechanical reading device for people with vision impairments.
Blindness, Technology, and Multimodal Reading 