Last week's closure of UT's Accessibility Institute has caused former colleagues of UT researcher John Slatin and advocates of the institute to voice concern.
Slatin, who died in April, established the Institute in the mid-1990s as a center to conduct research on how to make technology more accessible for people with disabilities. Slatin lost his eyesight late in life, but before his blindness, he helped develop ways technology could provide educational opportunities for people with disabilities, said former collaborator Sharron Rush.
Rush is now the executive director of knowbility.org, a Web site that advocates technology accessibility to those with disabilities.
"It just seems a shame to us in the Austin community that UT would give up a global position at this time," Rush said.
Vice Provost Steve Monti said Slatin's death left the program without direction. The provost's office administered the institute, which was located in the Flawn Academic Center, and provided most of its operating costs.
"I'm not sure what other decision we could make," Monti said. "The provost's office doesn't establish programs. If it is an interest of the faculty, then we work with the deans and the faculty to support that priority."
Engineering professor Vicki Almstrum, who worked at the institute during the summer, said one development that came from the institute was a software program called JAWS, which reads the contents of a Web page to visually impaired users.
"With an aging population, a lot of accessibility issues are very important," she said.
Monti said his office has had preliminary conversations with Dean Andrew Dillon about reopening the institute in the School of Information.
Dillon said the faculty in the School of Information were receptive to the idea of adopting the Accessibility Institute, but currently the school has no faculty member who is a natural leader for such a program. If the program is reestablished, a director would have to be recruited from another institution.
"I think if we put our minds to it, we could probably find somebody," Dillon said.
Any outside researchers recruited to lead the program would have the advantage of a state of the art laboratory for testing new accessibility software, Dillon said, also cautioning that faculty from the School of Information might be reluctant to support a new program that would divert funds.
"I would need a commitment from the University for the resources to hire somebody like that," Dillon said. "You have to be active if you want to get the best talent."
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