STEM
Dr. Chieko Asakawa of IBM Receives Highest Honor from SWE
T
he Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is pleased to announce IBM’s
Chieko Asakawa, Ph.D. as the recipient of the 2010 SWE Achievement Award. She is being honored for challenging conven- tional ideas about how people with visual impairments use technology and for pio- neering research and technical advances in Web accessibility. “Dr. Asakawa is recognized world-
wide for her expertise and research in information technology accessibility for individuals with visual impairments,” says Siddika Demir, SWE president. “Her groundbreaking work developing tools and frameworks helps solve accessibility problems, allows those with special needs the same Internet capabilities and will influence the next generation of cutting- edge technologies.” Dr. Asakawa is the chief technology
officer of accessibility research and tech- nology at IBM Research. In this role, she provides technical guidance to the ac- cessibility research team worldwide. Dr. Asakawa is also an international thought leader in the field of information technol- ogy accessibility for persons with disabil- ities, the elderly and others with special needs.
“The tremendous achievements of Dr.
Asakawa have opened the wonders of the World Wide Web and other technologies to thousands of people around the world who have vision and other disabilities,” says Linda Sanford, senior vice president at IBM. “As an IBM Fellow, Asakawa- san serves as a wonderful role model and inspiration to the next generation of tech- nologists who aspire to make the world a better place.” Having lost her sight at age 14, Dr.
Asakawa has a deep understanding of people with special needs. She began her career with IBM 25 years ago, and has fo- cused on accessibility research ever since. In the 1980s, she drove development of
54 HISPANIC NETWORK MAGAZINE
the first Braille editing system, and in 1997, developed the innovative voice browser, Home Page Reader, a program that reads aloud words on a webpage, opening up the new information resource for the blind. Dr. Asakawa has also man- aged the development of numerous other accessibility tools and frameworks for developers and users with visual impair- ments, as well as a transcoding technol- ogy that improves webpage readability among the aging population. In 2008, she and her team launched the Social Accessi- bility Project, a research experiment using a social computing approach to solve real- world accessibility problems. Dr. Asakawa has received numerous recognitions from her peers and IBM, in- cluding being named an IBM Fellow, the company’s highest technical honor. She is one of only 218 Fellows in company history and the first Japanese woman to receive the honor. Dr. Asakawa was also named an IPSJ Fellow by the Information
Celebrating 19 Years of Diversity
Processing Society of Japan, inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2003 and has been grant- ed 20 patents for her work. Dr. Asakawa holds a B.A. degree in
English literature from Otemon Gakuin University, and a Ph.D. in engineering from The University of Tokyo, Japan. The Achievement Award is the highest
award given by SWE. Criteria are based on the significance of the nominee’s life- time achievements and on her sustained contributions to the field of engineering. The Achievement Award was presented Friday, November 5 at WE10, the So- ciety’s Annual Conference. WE10 took place at the Orange County Convention Center, Nov. 4-6, in Orlando, FL, and more than 5,300 attendees included colle- gians and professionals from the industry, government and academia.
Source: Society of Women Engineers
www.HispanicNetworkMagazine.com
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