Thursday, September 17, Holiday Inn Hotel Roanoke Airport

Accessibility and Software Engineering

Jason Grieves
Microsoft Corporation
Redmond, Washington

Our expectations of software are very high (as they should be!). We expect that the software we use will be reliable, secure, and perform well - we expect the software to "just work." There are many ways that we experience software, some of us use the traditional input method of keyboard and mouse. I and many other people augment this with accessible solutions such as larger screens, speech recognition, and screen readers.

In the Windows products, we at Microsoft consider accessibility- just like reliability, performance, and security-to be fundamental to all software in the operating system. Our feature teams create their software to meet these and other core requirements, which combine to create an operating system that meets the essential expectations of our users. In Windows 7 we continued the integration of accessibility requirements into our software engineering process. Accessibility, like the other fundamental requirements, has been planned, designed, implemented and tested in Windows 7.
In this talk, I will:

Jason Grieves is a Program Manager in the Windows Accessibility Group at Microsoft, in Redmond, WA. He works with users of all ages to identify their abilities rather than disabilities. He then finds solutions, often technology-based, to use those abilities to live, work, and play. Jason received the B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2008. Previous to Microsoft, Jason worked at IBM in their UNIX operating system AIX, porting many of the features available to Linux users. Jason also worked on the Ubuntu accessibility team, help fix Linux bugs and implement the accessible setup designed to allow users with disabilities to actually install the operating system.

Jason's passion for accessibility stems from his own visual impairment. In high school Jason created a PC solution for a girl entering first grade that also had a visual impairment. When he saw that his previous experience and skills in computers could be used to help other people, he knew he had found his career.

Meeting Details:
Date: Thursday, September 17, 2009
Social: 6:30 PM
Dinner: 7:00 PM
Talks: 8:00 PM
Cost:
          Members & Guests $20.00
          Students $10.00

Reserve by 5 PM Monday September 14, 2009
Dr. Wilbur Dale (540) 464-7547
dalewn@vmi.edu
Please specify the number of attendees.

Directions to Holiday Inn Hotel Roanoke Airport
2727 Ferndale Drive NW

I-581, Exit 3
Hershberger Rd West
1st Right onto Ordway Drive, ¼ mile,
Right into parking lot.