Grand Challenges: Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility

May 2, 2025
Title II: Are You Ready? Preparing for the New Rule on Accessibility of Electronic Information and Web Content
Co-sponsored by the Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility (MIDA)
8:30AM-4PM, Anacostia Building, College Park, MD
We are one year out from the compliance deadline for the new rule on the accessibility of web content and mobile apps for all public institutions. Join us for a dynamic lineup, including a powerful keynote by Eve Hill, J.D., Partner at Brown Goldstein & Levy and Inclusivity Strategic Consulting and our opening plenary by Judy Risch, J.D., Ph.D., Title IX & Equity Access Services Special Advisor, Grand River Solutions each bringing over two decades of experience in civil rights and digital accessibility.

The world of digital technologies and content is designed to meet the needs of the average person, often creating inaccessibility for people with disabilities. That means that over 20% of people are structurally excluded from education, employment, and healthcare. The Maryland Initiative for Digital Accessibility (MIDA) will make technology accessible and help make the world more inclusive of and for people with disabilities.

The goal of MIDA is to change technology design research and practice so that it involves the disability community as an equal partner, accessibility is proactively built-in, and technology is “born-accessible.” Successfully transforming technology research and development to be born-accessible and sustainable requires the involvement and advocacy, from the beginning, of disability rights groups as equal partners with academic researchers and with technology companies.

The connections between these communities and strong interdisciplinary and cross-sector teams of experts, will create more effective, more impactful R&D projects on accessibility.

These projects will make more digital technologies and content accessible for people with disabilities and create technologies that may alleviate inaccessibility in the physical world, leading to fewer structural barriers, more inclusion in society, better educational outcomes, and employment success for people with disabilities.

Leadership Team:

PI: Jonathan Lazar (INFO), Professor, Information Studies	Co-PI: Paul Jaeger (INFO), Professor, Information Studies	MIDA Associate Director of Higher Education: Galina Reitz (INFO), Senior Lecturer and Faculty Director, Information Studies	Co-PI: Gulnoza Yakubova (EDUC), Assistant Professor, Special Education	Co-PI: Ana Palla (DIT/SPH), Senior IT Accessibility and UX Specialist and Lecturer, School of Public Health
Co-PI: J. Bern Jordan (INFO), Assistant Research Scientist, Information Studies

Campus Collaborators:

Additional faculty and staff members from across campus who will collaborate in MIDA include:

iSchool: Elizabeth Bonsignore, Eun Kyoung Choe, Tamara Clegg, Niklas Elmqvist, Jinjuan Heidi Feng, Ge Gao, Amelia Gibson, Ursula Gorham, Kate Izsak, Ron Padron, Galina Reitz, Victoria Van Hyning
College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences: Huaishu Peng, Abhinav Shrivastava
A. James Clark School of Engineering: Monifa Vaughn-Cooke
College of Education: Yewon Lee, David Weintrop
College of Arts and Humanities: Shevaun Lewis
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Kathy Dow-Burger, Lacey Curry, Eric Hoover, Yi Ting Huang, Eusebia Mont, Lisa Rickard
School of Public Health: Elizabeth Aparicio, Shannon Jette, Sara Olsen
University Libraries: Nedelina Tchangalova
University Career Center: Nancy Forsythe
ADA Compliance Officer: Emily Lucio
TerpsEXCEED Program: Amy Dwyre D'Agati

Partnerships:

National Federation of the Blind
National Association of the Deaf
American Association of People with Disabilities
Easterseals
Teach Access
Disability Rights Maryland
The Maryland Image Center
Maryland Library for the Blind and Print Disabled
The Maryland Technology Assistance Program (MDTAP)
Blind Industries and Services of Maryland
The Down Syndrome Association of Maryland
Gallaudet University
Adobe
Microsoft
Meta