Team
Steve Landau
Steve Landau, Design and Fabrication. Steve first learned about how raised line diagrams are used by the blind as a substitute for visual graphics from Dr. Karen Luxton Gourgey of City University of New York in 1998. Soon after that, Steve founded Touch Graphics to develop new methods for printing tactile graphics. Since then Steve has organized a group of skillful and energetic collaborators, some of whom are introduced below, to realize projects in four product categories: exhibits, education, maps and signs.
Lucia Hasty
Lucia Hasty, Pedagogy. A fifteen-year Touch Graphics collaborator, Ms. Hasty is a certified teacher of blind or visually impaired learners. Lucia is co-author of the BANA Guidelines and Standards for Tactile Graphics. She served on the Tactile Graphics Committees of Braille Authority of North America (BANA) as chair, National Braille Association as past chair, and is a member of the tactile graphics committee of International Council on English Braille. She serves on the advisory boards of NASA Standard Touch, Dolphin Alternate Format Advisory Group, AHEAD's Alt Format Advisory Group. Lucia reviews all tactile materials produced by Touch Graphics for conformance to BANA standards, and provides advice to the company on best practices for teaching blind children.
Cosmo Wenman
Cosmo Wenman, Digital design and 3D modeling. Cosmo has collaborated on series of interactive tactile exhibits with Touch Graphics since 2015, including Guanyin at San Diego Museum of Art, Interactive Cosmic Buddha at Smithsonian Asian Art, Talking Tactile Penguin and Seahorse at Shedd Aquarium, Talking Tactile Brain at National Museum of Heath and Medicine, and the National Mall Tactile Map at the US Capitol.
Jeanice Bainnson
Jeanice Bainnson, Office Manager. Jeanice has been with Touch Graphics since 1998.
EQware has taken over ongoing development of T3 Tactile Tablet and interactive maps and exhibits for Touch Graphics Inc. Founded in 2003, EQware Engineering Inc. is a team of engineers specializing in embedded services. EQware has a longstanding passion for accessibility projects. Past projects have included accessible, embedded interfaces for STEM education, sonification of educational website diagrams, and hardware integrations with a variety of braille displays and printers.
Collaborators
Heamchand Subryan
Heamchand Subryan, Project Evaluator. Heamchand is Director of Interaction Design at the IDEA Center, School of Architecture, University at Buffalo. Heamchand has designed and carried out usabliy studies for Touch Graphics products since 2004.
Yue-Ting Siu
Yue-Ting Siu, Ph.D.,Advisor. Dr. Siu is a Teacher of Visually Impaired Students (TVI), program coordinator and assistant professor in the graduate teaching program for visual impairments in the Department of Special Education, San Francisco State University. Since serving as Touch Graphics Production Manager in the early 2000’s, Ting has continued collaborating as an advisor and as the Voice of the T3!
Bernat Franquesa
Bernat Franquesa, Owner, Touch Graphics Europe. Bernat is a tactile designer and printer serving museum customers. His interest in tactile graphics began when he was an intern with Karen Gourgey at Baruch College in 1999, where he and Steve Landau first met. Now, Bernat runs our sister company in Barcelona, Spain.
Ann Cunningham
Ann Cunningham, Content creator. Ann is a long-time Touch Graphics collaborator Ann has produced tactile materials that have been used in Touch Graphics products, including the Talking Tactile Pen, and T3 tactile tablet.
Sile O'Modhrain
Sile O'Modhrain, Advisor. Sile is a professor in Performing Arts Technology at the school of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of Michigan.Her research focuses on human-computer interaction, especially interfaces incorporating haptic and auditory feedback.
Noreen Grice
Noreen Grice, Content producer. With 30 years experience, Noreen is the world’s pre-eminent author of tactile graphic books on astronomy. Her books include: Touch the Stars, fifth edition (2019), Touch the Invisible Sky: A Multi-Wavelength Braille Book Featuring Tactile NASA Images (2007), and Touch The Sun, A NASA Braille Book (2005)
Joshua Miele
Joshua Miele, Advisor. Josh is an American scientist and inventor who specializes in adaptive technology design. Since 2019, Miele has been a Principal Accessibility Researcher at Amazon Lab126. Before assuming his current position, Miele conducted research on tactile graphics and auditory displays at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, where he collaborated with Touch Graphics on design of the T3, as well as many other products. Dr. Miele received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021.