The second day of conference programming will center around three major plenary discussions:
- Preparing Telecommunications Relay Services for the next generation,
- Achieving 100% captioning on all video content as well as use of high quality automatic captioning, and
- Ensuring all tele-platforms are fully accessible to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, late-deafened, deafblind, and deaf with mobility issues.
Next Generation Relay will have David Bahar of Telecommunications Access of Maryland sharing the possibilities of what NGRelay could do. Larry Goldberg will speak about the latest captioning technologies, the use of Automatic Speech Recognition, why there are sometimes failures and what can be done about upholding quality standards. The final keynote of the day will be Carrie Lou Garberoglio sharing what the National Deaf Center has learned regarding use of virtual conferencing platforms in education, the workforce, and healthcare.
Each plenary speech will be followed by three simultaneous live breakout sessions. NGRelay will have breakout panelists on Video Relay Services, Captioning Telephone Service, and DeafBlind Relay Access. Automated captioning will have panelists serving for Broadcast Captioning, Web Captioning, and Captioning Telephone Services. The last plenary of the day, Tele-Access, will have panelists on teleconferencing, tele-education, and tele-health.
Conference attendees can choose any breakout session that interests them and pass on questions to the hosts. All breakout sessions will be moderated by a TDI Board member.
The Next Generation Relay topic will have panelists for each of three three breakout sessions. Discussing the possibilities of Video Relay Service will be:
- Zainab Alkebsi, Policy Counsel at National Association of the Deaf
- Spencer Montan, Project Manager at RIT/NTID Center on Access Technology
- Lance Pickett, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Sorenson Communications
- Michael Scott, Attorney Advisor with Disability Rights Office at the FCC
The panel will be moderated by Jim House, TDI Board member and west region representative.
On the Captioning Telephone Service side, we will see:
- Nathan Gomme, Executive Director at New Mexico Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
- Elliot Greenwald, Deputy Chief of Disability Rights Office at the FCC
- Lise Hamlin, Director of Public Policy at Hearing Loss Association of America
- Dixie Ziegler, Vice President of Relay at Hamilton Telecommunications
This session will be moderated by Tina Childress, TDI Board member at large.
The DeafBlind panel will be lead by:
- Gabrielle Joseph, Chief Operating Officer at GlobalVRS
- René Pellerin, DeafBlind Advocate
- Keith Clark, Associate Accessibility Relationship Manager at T-Mobile
- Bill Wallace, Attorney Advisor with Disability Rights Office at the FCC
Moderating will be John Kinstler, TDI Board Vice President and midwest region representative.
The 3pm breakout session No More Craptions will cover three areas where captioning is heavily used: broadcast television, web-based content, and captioning telephone.
For television captioning, we’ll see:
- Karen Peltz Strauss, Disability Access Consultant
- Christian Vogler, Director of Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University
- Larry Walke, Associate General Counsel at National Association of Broadcasters
Opeoluwa Sotonwa, TDI Board at large will be the moderator.
On the internet side, we’ll have:
- Joshua Pila, General Counsel at Meredith Corporation
- Rikki Poynter, Content Creator and Public Speaker
- Heather York, Vice President of Marketing and Governmental Affairs at VITAC
- Sean Forbes, Co-Founder of DPAN.tv
Moderator will be CM Boryslawskyj, northeast regional representative and TDI Board Treasurer.
And wrapping up with Captioning Telephone are:
- Cristina Duarte, Director of Regulatory Affairs at InnoCaption
- Cre Engelke, Director of Linguistic Research at Ultratec
- Linda Kozma Spytek, Senior Research Audiologist at Gallaudet University’s Technology Access Program
- Erik Strand, CEO & Founder of MachineGenius
We’ll have Matt Myrick, TDI Board member at large, as the moderator.
The last breakout session of the day is about Shaping an Accessible Tele-World focusing on the three areas where virtual conferencing has made a huge impact.
To talk about Video Conferencing, we’ll have:
- Roberto Cabrera, Outreach Consultant – DeafBlind Speciality with Colorado Commission for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and DeafBlind
- Christian Vogler, Director of Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University
- Sam Sepah, Artificial Intelligence Research Product Manager at Google
The moderator will be Tina Childress, TDI Board member at large.
For Tele-education, we’ll be learning from
- Sheryl Burgsthaler, Director of Accessible Technology Services at University of Washington
- Raja Kushalnager, Director of Information Technology Program at Gallaudet University
- Chris Sano, Software Engineer at Microsoft
Moderating this panel will be Mei Kennedy, TDI Board member at large.
Checking on the health side of things, we’ll hear from:
- Mei Kwong, Executive Director of Center for Connected Health Policy
- Suzy Rosen Singleton, Chief of Disability Rights Office at the Federal Communications Commission
- Mike McKee, Physician and Researcher with University of Michigan Medical School
Moderated by Matt Myrick, TDI Board Member at large.
About TDI
TDI is a national nonprofit organization shaping the nation’s public policies in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to advance the interests of the 48 million Americans who are deaf, hard of hearing, late-deafened, deafblind, and deaf with mobility issues.