Who We Are: The People and Organizations that Make Up the RtF Initiative

Bernhard Heinser, former Director of the Swiss Library for the Blind and Visually Impaired (www.sbs.ch) between 1995 and 2008, is now CFO of the DAISY Consortium (www.daisy.org). Dr. Heinser was a co-founder of the DAISY Consortium and served on its Board of Directors and as its Treasurer before becoming DAISY's Chief Financial and Development Officer. In addition he helped to form Access for all, the Swiss Foundation for a technology fit to people with disabilities (2000), as well as the Consortium of Swiss Libraries for Blind People (1999).

Most recently, Mr. Heinser has helped create the TIGAR pilot project – Trusted Intermediary Global Accessible Resources – which is the merger of the (DAISY/IFLA LPD) Global Accessible Library project and the WIPO Trusted Intermediary project. The TIGAR project long-term objective is to significantly increase the number of accessible versions of published works available worldwide to people who have a print disability, and ultimately to have those works available to those users by download at any time and from anywhere.  

Technological Advisory Board 

To help guide the organization technically especially around building the system to work in the new technical world that is emerging and to ensure security and scalability, a number of technology leaders have agreed to serve on our Technological Advisory Board. 

Brian Behlendorf A primary developer of the Apache Web server, Mozilla Foundation Board Member and Chief Technical Officer for World Economic Forum. READ MORE

David Boloker Chief Technical Officer for Emerging Internet Technologies in IBM Software Group. READ MORE

Vint Cerf Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google and one of the fathers of the Internet. READ MORE

Bill Coleman Partner at Alsop Louie Partners, founder and CEO of several IT firms, former VP at SUN, and the benefactor for the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities. READ MORE

Dale Hatfield Silicon Flatirons and former Chief Technologist for the US Federal Communications Commission. READ MORE

 RtF Board of Advisors

The initial members of our Board of Advisors include:

	Raymond Cohen  [Chair]   {We are sad to announce Ray's passing  March 22, 2013.  Our hearts go out to Michele and the Family.  Thank you Ray.} CANADA Founder and CEO of the Canadian Abilities Foundation
	Saulo Barretto BRAZIL The Human Project
	Evangelos Bekiaris Ph.D. GREECE The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)
	Judy Brewer US World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
	Pier Luigi Emiliani ITALY Former Director of Institute of Applied Physics, National Research Council
	Jim Fruchterman US CEO Benetech
	Abdul Waheed Khan Ph.D Former UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information
	Hiroshi Kawamura JAPAN DAISY Consortium
	Peter Korn US ORACLE
	Axel Leblois G3ICT / UN
	Clayton Lewis Ph.D. US Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
	José Angel Martinez SPAIN Technosite ONCE
	Mark McCusker IRELAND CEO TextHelp
	Sang-Mook Lee Ph.D. KOREA Seoul National University
	Catherine Ngugi TANZANIA AFRICA - Director OER Africa
	Rich Schwerdtfeger D.E. US IBM - Lead Accessibility Architect

Early Participants

Raising the Floor needs, and has attracted, a wide range of different people and organizations from across the spectrum. Participants include consumers, developers, researchers, practitioners, policy people, vendors and manufactures large and small, mainstream and assistive technology. They are located across the globe on every continent except Antarctica. 

Some of the early participants and supporters of the Raising the Floor effort include:

NOTE: Since this list was compiled by combining lists we are sure there are errors. If you spot an error please let us know by sending an email to info@raisingthefloor.org and put [Participation] in the subject line. If you are interested in joining in see Get Involved.

Sponsors

Raising the Floor is currently funded directly by the the following sponsors

• National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) , US Dept of Education under grant #H133E080022.
• Adobe Foundation - through a generous gift to support the initiation and organization of Raising the Floor and its teams.

In addition, RtF is funded indirectly through the support of its many participants.  Indirect funding for RtF efforts by its participants includes the following:

• National Science Foundation - Support for several partner projects, including the University of Washington's WebAnywhere project, the University of Wisconsin's Text-to-Picture Synthesis project, and many others.
• United Nations - Support for the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT). 
• Mozilla Foundation - Joint funding with Benetech to build a DAISY eBook reader for use with the Firefox web browser, support for the Fire Vox and Bookshare projects.
• Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) of the U.S. Department of Education - Support for the Bookshare for Education project.
• Skoll Foundation and Omidyar Network - General support of Benetech.

If your work contributes to RtF and your funding agency is not named here, please let us know by sending an email to contribution@RaisingTheFloor.net with [Participation] in the subject line.