Joshua Miele

Last updated

Joshua Miele
Joshua Miele at the Third Annual Chairman's Awards for Advancement in Accessibility.jpg
Born1969 (age 54–55)
New York, U.S.
Education University of California, Berkeley
Awards MacArthur Fellowship (2021)
Scientific career
Fields Accessibility
Institutions
Thesis Human auditory perception of trajectories of motion in a simulated open-field environment  (2003)
Doctoral advisor Ervin Hafter

Joshua A. Miele (born 1969) is an American research scientist who specializes in accessible technology design. Miele conducted research on tactile graphics and auditory displays at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in California for fifteen years. In 2019, he joined Amazon Lab126, a subsidiary of Amazon that works on hardware products, where he is Principal Accessibility Researcher. He has been blind since early childhood.

Contents

Miele's work at Smith-Kettlewell includes Tactile Map Automated Production (TMAP), a web application for generating tactile maps of streets printable with a braille embosser, and YouDescribe, a web platform for creating and listening to audio descriptions of YouTube videos. In 2014, he worked with the San Francisco-based nonprofit LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired to start using TMAP to produce tactile maps of the Bay Area Rapid Transit for teachers and other consumers. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2021.

Life and career

Early life

Joshua A. Miele was born in New York in 1969, the son of Isabella and Jean Miele and one of three siblings. [1] [2] At the age of four, he was blinded in an acid attack outside of the family home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, [1] and he underwent surgeries for his burns and blindness through his childhood. [2] He attended the Industrial Home for the Blind for kindergarten. [1] [3]

Miele recalls his mother wanted him to be "as active and engaged with the world as possible" growing up, [4] and she encouraged him to feel art in museums. [2] Electronics and model kits that his mother bought for his birthdays lacked accessible instructions, so he would attempt to build them through trial and error. [5] His father worked as an architect. When he was six or seven years old, he would play with floor plans and layout tape in his father's office. [6] After his parents separated in 1975, Miele spent much of his time with his sister. [1]

In the first grade he was mainstreamed into Public School 102, [1] [3] where he was taught by the same teacher, from the third grade through high school, who transcribed all of his learning materials into braille. [4] Miele and his sister moved to Rockland County with their mother's new partner. [1] His stepfather, a geophysicist, would become a strong influence. [7] He observed that, in this new environment, "most kids were afraid of me because I was different, and, for the first time in my life, I had classmates who thought it was fun to mess with the blind kid". [8] In high school, he took classes in chemistry and biology [7] and applied to study physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987. [9]

Education

Miele said he gained an awareness of the "design and assumptions" of the world while studying at Berkeley's Moffitt Library (pictured). Moffitt exterior.JPG
Miele said he gained an awareness of the "design and assumptions" of the world while studying at Berkeley's Moffitt Library (pictured).

Before moving to California for university, Miele's only significant encounter with other blind people was at a camp for blind youth in Vermont. [8] At Berkeley, he studied with other visually impaired students [9] and described going through classes with "almost no negative experiences" with his professors. [7] He spent time in a study center for blind students in the basement of Berkeley's Moffitt Library, nicknamed "The Cave", where he recalls gaining awareness of "design and assumptions" and seeing how design choices in the world were shaped by "ableist thought behind who's in control of the tools that we use, whether those tools are intersection controls or building entrances or computer technology." [8] Initially desiring to be a rocket scientist, Miele took an internship at NASA. [4] One semester prior to graduation, he paused his education to work at Berkeley Systems, then a start-up developing Macintosh computer software to be accessible to blind people; [9] he was hired to perform software testing and technical support for their OutSpoken screen reader software and took on more responsibilities such as technical writing and marketing for the product. [8] [6]

Miele returned to university to finish his physics degree and completed a summer internship at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, where he designed and developed accessible technology for visually impaired people. When Berkeley Systems was sold in 1996, Miele debated whether he should start a company or pursue a PhD in policymaking. His mentor from Smith-Kettlewell, Bill Gerrey, recommended Miele work as a scientist and obtain a degree in experimental psychology instead. [2] Miele then began a PhD in psychoacoustics at Berkeley. [4] [9] His studies focused on auditory motion perception—perception of the direction and speed in which sounds are traveling through hearing. Through his studies he worked with the numerical computation software package MATLAB to develop tools for reproducing graphical information created by MATLAB, such as bar charts, in auditory and tactile formats. [2]

Career

Miele returned to the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute under a predoctoral fellowship, and after earning his PhD in 2003, completed a postdoctoral fellowship [2] [6] which ultimately led to a full-time position as a scientist. [6] He acted as a principal investigator on some of the organization's projects and was associate director of research and development from 2007 to 2019. [10] Using funding from the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs, Smith-Kettlewell opened its Video Description Research and Development Center (VDRDC) in 2011, with Miele as its director. [11] From 2011 to 2015, Miele served as president of the board of the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. [1] [10]

Miele left Smith-Kettlewell at the beginning of 2019, after working for the organization for more than fifteen years, [6] and joined Amazon Lab126 as Principal Accessibility Researcher. In this position, he has developed the usability of Amazon's website and devices for visually impaired people. Projects he has been involved with include braille and tactile interfaces for Amazon devices such as screen readers, tablets, and microwave ovens; the "Show and Tell" feature for Amazon Alexa, which identifies items the user holds up to the device; and audio descriptions for the streaming service Amazon Prime Video. [8] [4]

In 2021, Miele was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship "for his inventions giving blind and visually impaired people access to everyday technology"; the award citation highlighted his Tactile Map Automated Production, WearaBraille, and YouDescribe projects. [4] At a 2022 conference, he explained the prize money would be used to found a nonprofit organization, named the Center for Accessibility and Open Source, that would fund open-source projects for people with disabilities. [12] Later in 2022, he was named a Distinguished Research Fellow in Disability, Accessibility, and Design at his alma mater Berkeley, to be working alongside professor Karen Nakamura. [13] In 2025, Hachette Books is to publish Miele's memoir Connecting Dots: A Blind Life, written with journalist Wendell Jamieson, who wrote an article about Miele for The New York Times in 2013. [13] [14]

Personal life

Miele lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children. [1] [4] He plays the bass for services at a Jewish spiritual community in Berkeley. [2] [15] His older sister is a writer and professor at Bronx Community College, [1] and his brother is a photographer. [16]

Until 2013, when The New York Times published a profile of Miele's early life and career, he was hesitant to have his story published, feeling as though it would let the day he was attacked as a child "dominate his life" rather than let him be recognized for his work. [1] [8]

Research

Tactile graphics

External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg BART Tactile Mapping Project of the Blind, LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, 17:50, June 8, 2012

In 2003, while working at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, Miele began developing the Tactile Map Automated Production (TMAP) Project, a web application capable of producing tactile maps of streets suitable for printing with a braille embosser. [17] [18] Miele later worked with the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired to create tactile maps of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). In developing a concept, Miele adapted a Livescribe digital pen to read off relevant information when the user taps a certain part of a tactile map, like which buses come through each bus stop. [9] [19] The LightHouse implemented Miele's concept through a four-year process which involved software design and testing, surveying transportation services, and building the maps. Distribution of the maps for use by teachers and other consumers began in 2014. [19] [20]

Maps produced with TMAP were featured in a 2018 exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. [21] In 2018, the National Federation of the Blind presented LightHouse with its Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award for the development of TMAP. [22]

Audio description

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler with award recipients at the 2014 FCC Chair's Awards for Advancement in Accessibility 6.9.2014 Third Annual Chairman's Awards for Advancement in Accessibility (14260150159).jpg
FCC chairman Tom Wheeler with award recipients at the 2014 FCC Chair's Awards for Advancement in Accessibility

A major project of the Video Description Research and Development Center (VDRDC) was the development of YouDescribe, a website where volunteers can record accompanying audio descriptions for YouTube videos and view videos alongside the audio descriptions. [9] [11] [23] In order to gauge the popularity of audio description and obtain feedback through focus groups, Miele and his research group attended meetings of the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind in 2012. [24]

The YouDescribe website was launched in 2014. That year, Miele began hosting the annual Describeathon, a one-day event held at Smith-Kettlewell during which people recorded audio descriptions. [25] The same year the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) awarded Miele the FCC Chair's Award for Advancement in Accessibility. [25] [26] In a 2016 article on audio description in Representations , Berkeley professor Georgina Kleege discussed YouDescribe's benefits and potential pitfalls and her experience using the service with her students. [23] According to Smith-Kettlewell, by May 2022, the service was set to have nearly 5,000 video descriptions at the end of the year. [8]

Other projects

An early project at Smith-Kettlewell is WearaBraille, gloves that allow interaction with a smartphone by tapping braille on a hard surface. The WearaBraille functions wirelessly and can be used to send text messages, open applications, and answer phone calls. [4] [26] Miele also developed a basic iPhone application for blind wayfinding named overTHERE [4] [27] and in 2015 founded the Blind Arduino Project, a local group of blind students and hobbyists involved with the maker movement focused on designing their own technological devices. [28] [29]

Selected publications

As of 2019, Miele is listed as a co-author of at least seven journal publications: [30]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Braille</span> Tactile writing system

Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone devices. Braille can be written using a slate and stylus, a braille writer, an electronic braille notetaker or with the use of a computer connected to a braille embosser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Refreshable braille display</span> Device for displaying braille characters

A refreshable braille display or braille terminal is an electro-mechanical device for displaying braille characters, usually by means of round-tipped pins raised through holes in a flat surface. Visually impaired computer users who cannot use a standard computer monitor can use it to read text output. Deafblind computer users may also use refreshable braille displays.

Perkins School for the Blind, in Watertown, Massachusetts, was founded in 1829 and is the oldest school for the blind in the United States. It has also been known as the Perkins Institution for the Blind.

An audio game is an electronic game played on a device such as a personal computer. It is similar to a video game save that there is audible and tactile feedback but not visual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian currency tactile feature</span> Feature on the Canadian Journey and Frontier series of Canadian banknotes

The Canadian currency tactile feature is a feature on the Canadian Journey and Frontier series of Canadian banknotes to aid people who are visually impaired to identify the notes. The feature indicates the banknote denomination in the upper left corner of the face side of the bill using a series of raised dots. It was suggested by Bruno Thériault, an administrator for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and designed by Susan Lederman, a professor of psychology at Queen's University.

The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) is an American non-profit organization for people with vision loss. AFB's objectives include conducting research to advance change, promoting knowledge and understanding, and shaping policies and practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual impairment</span> Decreased ability to see

Visual or vision impairment is the partial or total inability of visual perception. In the absence of treatment such as corrective eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment, visual impairment may cause the individual difficulties with normal daily tasks, including reading and walking. The terms low vision and blindness are often used for levels of impairment which are difficult or impossible to correct and significantly impact daily life. In addition to the various permanent conditions, fleeting temporary vision impairment, amaurosis fugax, may occur, and may indicate serious medical problems.

Tactile graphics, including tactile pictures, tactile diagrams, tactile maps, and tactile graphs, are images that use raised surfaces so that a visually impaired person can feel them. They are used to convey non-textual information such as maps, paintings, graphs and diagrams.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GPS for the visually impaired</span>

Since the Global Positioning System (GPS) was introduced in the late 1980s there have been many attempts to integrate it into a navigation-assistance system for blind and visually impaired people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hadley (non-profit organization)</span>

Hadley, formerly Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired, is an American non-profit, based in Winnetka, Illinois. It offers instruction and classes for individuals who have lost their vision or are blind.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accessible publishing</span> Approach to publishing and book design

Accessible publishing is an approach to publishing and book design whereby books and other texts are made available in alternative formats designed to aid or replace the reading process. It is particularly relevant for people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled.

Telesensory Systems, Inc. (TSI) was an American corporation that invented, designed, manufactured, and distributed technological aids for blind and low vision persons. TSI's products helped visually impaired people work independently with computers and with ordinary printed materials.

A sighted child who is reading at a basic level should be able to understand common words and answer simple questions about the information presented. They should also have enough fluency to get through the material in a timely manner. Over the course of a child's education, these foundations are built on to teach higher levels of math, science, and comprehension skills. Children who are blind not only have the education disadvantage of not being able to see: they also miss out on the very fundamental parts of early and advanced education if not provided with the necessary tools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Braille Institute of America</span> Nonprofit organization

The Braille Institute of America (BIA) is a nonprofit organization with headquarters in Los Angeles providing programs, seminars and one-on-one instruction for the visually impaired community in Southern California. Funded almost entirely by private donations, all of the institute's services are provided completely free of charge. The organization has seven regional centers: Anaheim, Coachella Valley, Laguna Hills, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego and Santa Barbara, as well as outreach programs at more than 200 locations throughout Southern California. It is a member of the Braille Authority of North America.

A print-disabled person is "a person who cannot effectively read print because of a visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability". A print disability prevents a person from gaining information from printed material in the standard way, and requires them to utilize alternative methods to access that information. Print disabilities include visual impairments, learning disabilities, or physical disabilities that impede the ability to manipulate a book. The term was coined by George Kerscher, a pioneer in digital talking books. DAISY is used by libraries as a means of making complex books accessible via audio.

Alternative formats include audio, braille, electronic or large print versions of standard print such as educational material, textbooks, information leaflets, and even people's personal bills and letters. Alternative formats are created to help people who are blind or visually impaired to gain access to information either by sight, by hearing (audio) or by touch (braille).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chieko Asakawa</span> Japanese computer scientist

Chieko Asakawa is a blind Japanese computer scientist, known for her work at IBM Research – Tokyo in accessibility. A Netscape browser plug-in she developed, the IBM Home Page Reader, became the most widely used web-to-speech system available. She is the recipient of numerous industry and government awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cecogram</span> Package containing items for visually impaired persons

A cecogram, also known as literature for the blind, is a letter or a parcel that contains documents or items intended for visually impaired persons. Cecograms can be sent or received by such persons, as well as by organisations that provide assistance to the visually impaired. Cecograms are either partially or entirely exempt from postage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute</span> Non-profit organization in San Francisco

The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute is a nonprofit research institute in San Francisco, California, with a focus on vision science and rehabilitation engineering. It was founded in 1959 by Arthur Jampolsky and Alan B. Scott, when some members of Stanford University's Ophthalmology Department elected to stay in San Francisco rather than move to Palo Alto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atkinson Hyperlegible</span> Grotesque sans-serif typeface

Atkinson Hyperlegible is a freely available typeface built around a grotesque sans-serif core, intended to be optimally legible for readers who are partially visually impaired, with all characters maximally distinguishable from one another. It was developed by the Braille Institute of America in collaboration with Applied Design Works and is available under the SIL Open Font License. It won Fast Company's Innovation by Design Award for Graphic Design in 2019 and was shortlisted for a graphic design award by Dezeen in 2020.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Jamieson, Wendell (March 2, 2013). "The Crime of His Childhood". The New York Times . Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kendrick, Deborah (May 2013). "Series: The Work of the Smith-Kettlewell Institute Part I: A Profile of Principal Investigator Joshua A. Miele". AccessWorld. 14 (5). American Foundation for the Blind . Retrieved November 20, 2021.
  3. 1 2 "DVP Interview: Joshua Miele and Lainey Feingold". Disability Visibility Project. April 25, 2017. Retrieved November 18, 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Wall, Alix (September 29, 2021). "Berkeley inventor of blind adaptive technology wins MacArthur 'genius' prize". Berkeleyside . Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  5. ↑ Miele, Joshua (2016). "The Making of a Blind Maker". Future Reflections . Vol. 35, no. 2 - Special Issue: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults. ISSN   0883-3419 . Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Stein, Deborah Kent, ed. (2019). "Semiconductors, Streetscapes, and Learning Through Touch". Future Reflections . Vol. 38, no. 2 - Special Issue on Tactile Fluency. American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults. ISSN   0883-3419 . Retrieved November 20, 2021.
  7. 1 2 3 "Learning to adapt". Physics World . May 30, 2013. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Cueto, Isabella (March 28, 2022). "'Where the bats hung out': How a basement hideaway at UC Berkeley nurtured a generation of blind innovators". Stat . Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 McDede, Holly J. (April 20, 2016). "The Blind Leading the Blind: Designing an Inclusive World". California Magazine . Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  10. 1 2 "Joshua Miele". MacArthur Foundation . Retrieved January 9, 2022.
  11. 1 2 Kendrick, Deborah (June 2013). "Series: The Work of the Smith-Kettlewell Institute Part II: The Video Description Research and Development Center". AccessWorld. 14 (6). American Foundation for the Blind . Retrieved November 20, 2021.
  12. ↑ Cueto, Isabella (May 24, 2022). "Amazon accessibility researcher says inclusion of people with disabilities is 'lacking' in health tech". Stat+ . Archived from the original on May 24, 2022. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  13. 1 2 Wall, Alix (November 13, 2022). "A year after life-changing award, Berkeley inventor for the blind is writing a memoir". Berkeleyside . Retrieved December 18, 2023.
  14. ↑ DeWild, Melissa; Wyatt, Neal (September 11, 2024). "Biography & Memoir | Prepub Alert, March 2025 Titles". Library Journal . Retrieved September 21, 2024.
  15. ↑ Wall, Alix (September 30, 2021). "Joshua Miele went blind at 4. Now he's a MacArthur Genius". The Forward . Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  16. ↑ Jamieson, Wendell (August 29, 2013). "Joshua Miele: Inspiration from an Unthinkable Crime". Reader's Digest . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  17. ↑ Kendrick, Deborah (October 2013). "Series: The Work of the Smith-Kettlewell Institute Part IV: Smith-Kettlewell Meets Touch Graphics: Mapping Access to Visual Information for People with Vision Loss". AccessWorld. 14 (10). American Foundation for the Blind . Retrieved November 20, 2021.
  18. ↑ "Tactile Map Automated Production (TMAP)". Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute . Retrieved January 6, 2022.
  19. 1 2 Bliss, Laura (January 15, 2015). "Making Better Maps for the Blind". CityLab . Archived from the original on January 15, 2015. Retrieved October 1, 2021.
  20. ↑ "Braille and Tactile Maps, Doris W. Kahn Accessible Transportation Award". Metropolitan Transportation Commission. October 19, 2016. Retrieved February 13, 2022.
  21. ↑ "Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum to Present "The Senses: Design Beyond Vision"" (Press release). Smithsonian Institution. February 27, 2018. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  22. ↑ "Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired of San Francisco". National Federation of the Blind. Archived from the original on August 7, 2019. Retrieved January 9, 2022.
  23. 1 2 Kleege, Georgina (Summer 2016). "Audio Description Described: Current Standards, Future Innovations, Larger Implications". Representations (135). University of California Press: 89–101. doi:10.1525/rep.2016.135.1.89. JSTOR   26420567.
  24. ↑ Kendrick, Deborah (September 2013). "Series: The Work of the Smith-Kettlewell Institute Part III: The Video Description Research and Development Center, Continued". AccessWorld. 14 (9). American Foundation for the Blind . Retrieved November 20, 2021.
  25. 1 2 Colin, Chris (November 2, 2014). "Hearing Pictures". The California Sunday Magazine . Archived from the original on November 2, 2014. Retrieved January 9, 2022.
  26. 1 2 "Berkeley scientist designs tools for the visually impaired". Crosscurrents . KALW. March 2, 2016. Retrieved November 13, 2021.
  27. ↑ "overTHERE". Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute . Retrieved January 20, 2022.
  28. ↑ Kendrick, Deborah (November 2021). "Employment Matters: Dr. Joshua A. Miele, Amazon Accessibility Researcher and MacArthur Genius". AccessWorld. 22 (11). American Foundation for the Blind . Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  29. ↑ "Blind Arduino Project". Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute . Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  30. ↑ "Joshua Miele". Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute. Archived from the original on January 11, 2022. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.