Speaker Bios

Website

Biography:

Dr. Vanderheiden is the Founder and Director Emeritus of the Trace R&D Center and Professor in the iSchool at the University of Maryland. He has been active in the field of technology and disability for 50 years and was a pioneer in the field of Augmentative Communication (a term originating from his writings), assistive technology and computer access. Access features developed by Dr. Vanderheiden and the Trace Center team can be found in every computer and mobile device internationally (Windows, MacOS, iOS and Linux,…) as well as kiosks, ticket machines and more. He has also been a long-time leader in the area of web accessibility, creating the first set of Web Accessibility guidelines in 1995 and serving as co-editor and co-chairing the WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 Working Group. At the 6th World Wide Web Conference, he was the third annual recipient of the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial World Wide Web Award. His most recent work has focused on development of Morphic and proposing a completely different way to approach accessibility for next-next generation ICT. Dr. Vanderheiden is a past President and Fellow of RESNA, a Founding Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and Fellow in the Human Factors and Ergonomics society.

Biography:

Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet.   He has served in executive positions at ICANN, the Internet Society, MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A former Stanford Professor and former member of the US National Science Board, he is also the past President of the Association for Computing Machinery and serves in advisory capacities at NIST, DOE, NSF, NRO and NASA. He earned his B.S. in mathematics at Stanford and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science at UCLA.  He is a member of both the US National Academies of Science and Engineering, the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and the Worshipful Company of Stationers.

Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, US National Medal of Technology, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the Prince of Asturias Award, the Japan Prize, the Charles Stark Draper award, the ACM Turing Award, the Marconi Prize, the IEEE Medal of Honor, the Legion d’Honneur, the VinFutures Grand Prize  and the Franklin Medal. He is a Foreign Member of the British Royal Society and Swedish Academy of Engineering and holds 29 honorary degrees.