Program Thursday
All times are CET.
Location: Store auditorium
Øyvind Engh, Deputy National Librarian and host of the conference
Øyvind Engh is Deputy National Librarian at the National Library of Norway. For nearly twenty years, he has headed Norway’s accessible literature services and has been a strong advocate for international collaboration in this field.
Location: Store auditorium
Clint Covington, Accessibility & AI Leader at Microsoft (USA)
Productivity is often defined by speed and efficiency—but those measures collapse when content is inaccessible. This session examines the real-world impact of inaccessible documents, equations, and collaboration tools on people with disabilities, and how the industry is responding.
Drawing on cross‑industry work and Microsoft’s efforts in Microsoft 365, the talk highlights how Copilot, Accessibility Assistant, and assistive technologies are helping shift toward meaningful participation—redefining productivity as inclusion, agency, and impact.
Clint Covington is a 28-year Microsoft veteran and leads the accessibility strategy and execution for the company’s Experience + Devices group. This means he works to make Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook, SharePoint and Copilot usable for people with disabilities.
Location: Store auditorium
The exhibitors will briefly introduce themselves.
Location: Store auditorium
Dr. Neil Soiffer, Chief Listening Officer at Talking Cat Software (USA)
Dr. Soiffer will describe his 30 year journey from knowing nothing about accessibility to being a leading advocate for math accessibility and producing the primary solution for speaking, navigating, and brailling mathematics and chemical formulas. Like so many others working in accessibility, it has not always been a straight path, with both pushback and encouragement from companies and the government. He will recount some meetings with some remarkable figures in the field and help people understand the challenges around accessible mathematics.
Neil Soiffer was a principal architect of MathML, the standard for putting math on the web. He is the main developer of MathCAT, which is used with NVDA, JAWS, EasyReader and other assistive technologies to make math accessible in Web, Word, and PowerPoint documents.
Location:
12:00–12:30 Reading Mathematics in EasyReader
Mattias Karlsson, AltFormat Product Manager, Dolphin Computer Access AB (Sweden)
The presentation explores how Dolphin EasyReader supports accessible reading of mathematical content. There will be practical examples using the MathCAT library for MathML, along with EasyReader’s AI‑driven assistance.
Mattias Karlsson has been part of Dolphin since 1994, beginning his career as a software developer before stepping into the role of Product Manager in 2009. He now leads the development team for Dolphin EasyReader and has played an active role in shaping international accessibility standards, contributing to initiatives such as DAISY, EPUB3, eBraille and multiple EU funded projects.
12:30–13:00 Authoring MathML – Overview and Shortcomings
Sami Määttä, Planner, Accessibility Library Celia (Finland)
The presentation will provide an overview of different solutions for authoring and proofreading MathML content. The aim is to also open discussion on solutions we do not know of yet.
Sami Määttä is an expert in accessible mathematics in digital publications and takes part in the translation work with the screen reader add-on MathCAT. He has experience in planning and doing user research with children with print disabilities.
Location:
12:00–12:20 International working group Tactile Images – working towards standardization and sharing the workload
Julian Nauta, Product Manager for Tactile Images, Dedicon (the Netherlands)
In an increasingly visual world producers of adapted materials can never keep up. The goal of the working group is to define a common design language for tactile images and being able to share production files.
Julian Nauta works at Dedicon, a non-profit organization that adapt materials for all visual or reading impairments. Nauta has a background in product design and believes in co-creating tangible solutions for real-world problems or limitations.
12:20–13:00 Picture This: From Image to Experience. Transforming Art, Books and Games into Shared Tactile Experiences through UV Printing
Geke van de Wakker and Martin van Emous, Head of Marketing and Communications, CBB (the Netherlands)
CBB will introduce their work, explain the elevated prints, and share more about the process and how these works are created.
Location: Canteen
Location: Folkestova
Visit the exhibition to see products and discuss various solutions.
Location:
14:30–14:55 Math Reading and Writing with a Screen Reader
George Kerscher, Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium and Senior Advisor, Global Literacy, Benetech (USA)
The presentation will explore traditional audio-based reading of educational materials that contain math and compare it with text-based approach using a screen reader with MathCAT. The use of Read Aloud features in reading systems will be discussed as a bridge between the two approaches. The ability to stop speech and explore math in detail into Microsoft Word will also be explored.
George Kerscher is member of Publishing Groups in the W3C and a recognized international leader in document accessibility. He chairs the DAISY/NISO Standards committee.
14:55–15:20 Reading and Writing Math in Microsoft 365
Peter Wu, Principal Software Engineer, Microsoft (USA)
Learn about the improvements to Microsoft 365 in the past year that make it exponentially easier to create accessible math. Microsoft partnered with DAISY and others in the community to understand the challenges with math accessibility and authoring and design solutions. Peter Wu will demonstrate the improvements, answer questions, and lead a discussion on opportunities for further improvement.
Peter Wu has worked at Microsoft for over 30 years and in accessibility for over 11 years.
15:20–15:35 Break
15:35–16:15 Discussion on Authoring, Writing and Reading Mathematics
Facilitated by Richard Orme, Chief Executive Officer, DAISY Consortium
Richard Orme is a founding member of the UK Publishers Accessibility Action Group, and Advisory Board Vice Chair of the Accessible Books Consortium, an initiative of the UN agency WIPO.
Location:
14:30–14:50 The eBraille Format: What, Why and Why Now?
Nicole Gains, National Director of Digital Access Initiatives, American Printing House for the Blind
The presentation will provide the background and context for the development of the eBraille specifications, the advantages that it provides over other braille formats, and a status update on where APH is in field testing the new format.
eBraille is a new digital braille format for presenting well-formatted braille with integrated tactile graphics. Built on the ePub specification, eBraille offers significant benefits over existing braille file formats.
14:50–15:20 Current status of eBraille
Manfred Muchenberger, Head of Production, and Christian Egli, Lead Software Developer, SBS Schweizerische Bibliothek für Blinde, Seh- und Lesebehinderte (Switzerland)
SBS will briefly discuss eBraille in general and then explain the use cases that they, as a library, consider most important. They will then introduce some of the techniques used in eBraille and describe their workflow for producing eBraille alongside printed Braille and e-books. Finally, they will briefly show you an eBraille book in Dolphin EasyReader.
15:20–15:35 Break
15:35–16:05 Supporting the eBraille File Format with HumanWare Solutions
Andrew Flatres, Senior Product Manager, Braille , HumanWare (UK)
This presentation introduces how HumanWare products are adapting to support the new eBraille file format, highlighting the benefits of improved digital braille accessibility, streamlined file sharing, and enhanced compatibility across braille displays and note-taking devices. It will also demonstrate practical workflows for users and educators.
16:05–16:15 Discussion on eBraille
Location: Store auditorium
Maarten Verboom, DAISY Chairman of the Board and Director at Dedicon (the Netherlands)
The Annual General Meeting is open for all DAISY members. The link for live stream will be posted in the program one week before the meeting.
Location: Canteen