Making Digital Publishing Accessible to Persons Who are Blind and Print Disabled

George Kerscher Ph.D.

“in the Information Age, access to information is a fundamental human right” -UN 2001

He started innovations information technology by creating the first eBooks in 1987, and coined the term “print disabled. “He believes that properly designed information systems that use structured markup, such as XML, can make all information accessible to all people, and is pushing the evolving technologies in that direction.

Affiliations: Secretary General, DAISY Consortium, Co-chair, Steering Council of WAI, Senior Officer, RFB&D, Board of International Digital Publishing Forum, and serves on NIMAS.

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Senior Analyst at the world’s leading satellite and cable conditional access supplier. Over 20 years experience in software and security systems.

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Biography coming soon.

Garth most recently served as the General Manager and Vice President Software Engineering for the Gemstar eBook Group. In this position he was responsible for the operation of the division: platform and server engineering, quality assurance, content acquisition, content operations, content engineering, and customer support.

Garth led the Platform, Content Tools and Content Engineering groups for the Gemstar eBook Group. Garth is inventor or co-inventor of seven issued eBook patents; technologies include: cryptography and secure content distribution, eBook UI, resource/database dynamic conversion for cross-platform applications, and optimal paginated document presentation. Garth previously held the position of Vice President of Software Engineering at SoftBook Press.

Prior to the eBook effort, Garth founded Pacer Software and served as its CEO guiding it to a successful acquisition. Following the acquisition of Pacer Garth served as Engineering Director for NetManage, a leading supplier of networking and connectivity solutions.