Mike Wald leads research into accessible technologies in the Web and Internet Science Research Group, ECS and has advised HEFCE, JISC, and Universities on enhancing learning through the use of technologies. He established the University’s MSc in Computer Based Learning and Centre for Enabling and Learning Technologies (CELT) in 1994 and was involved in the establishment of the University’s Disability and Assistive Technology Services. He is a founder member of the International Liberated Learning Consortium that includes other leading universities (e.g. MIT) and organisations (e.g. IBM) and is investigating how speech recognition can make teaching and learning more accessible. Dr Wald and his team are currently developing a system to make multimedia web resources (e.g. podcasts) easier to access, search, manage, and exploit by supporting the creation of synchronised notes, bookmarks, tags, images, links and text captions.Contact Mike Wald

E.A. Draffan’s career began as a Speech and Language Therapist spending eight years as the District Speech and Language Therapist at a group of London Hospitals. The work involved supporting disabled people with a wide range of communication difficulties. Having left the National Health Service, she then worked in schools and colleges, specialising in the support of those with Special Needs whilst encouraging the use of assistive technologies (AT). A Winston Churchill Fellowship provided the chance to see how centres of AT were set up in the United States. This resulted in ten years work at the University of Sussex, building and running a regional AT Centre, whilst liaising with others to introduce the concepts of equal access to teaching and learning for those with disabilities. She went on to work with JISC TechDis, with Professor Paul Blenkhorn and now the University of Southampton. Contact E.A. Draffan

Yunjia Li graduated from East China University of Science and Technology in July 2007 and now has a 1st Class Computer Science Degree and a distinction in MSc Web Technologies, as well as extensive experience of web based user interface design. He was also Synote’s lead developer since the JISC MACFOB project in 2008 and JISC ALUIAR project 2011.Contact Yunjia Li

Gary Wills is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Southampton.  His main research projects revolve around providing people with relevant information in order for them to carry out a task. Gary’s research projects focus on System Engineering and he works across disciplines with colleagues from industry, medicine, psychology, nursing, social worker and education.Contact Gary Wills