This session is dedicated to the memory of our dear colleague mentor and Computer Science guru, Professor Arthur I. Karshmer who created this session at ICCHP in 2002 and chaired it at every ICCHP until 2014. Arthur I. Karshmer passed away on November 11, 2015. He was our former General Chair (ICCHP 2012) and ICCHP Roland Wagner Award Laureate 2014.

Access to mathematical expressions have always been a particular problem for blind and partially sighted people, and more widely people with print disability inclluding people with dyscalculi, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other preception or processing disorders. The main issue lays in the intrinsic linearity of non visual modalities, namely speech and Braille, and adapted visual modalities (e.g. size, color, contrast), which makes it difficult to understand the overall structure of expressions, while sighted people catch it at a glance.

This has a particular negative effect in terms of careers possibilities for print disabled people, since it excludes them not only from mathematical studies, but from all fields that require mathematical knowledge, including all scientific areas as well as areas using statistics.

However in the last decade a lot of works have been carried out for different target groups in order to improve

• access to mathematical materials in different formats (e.g. adapted visual, audio, Braille, captioning) and using Assistive Technologies
• understanding and learning mathematics based on flexible and adaptable multimedia representations
• doing mathematics employing multi-modal interaction possibilities (e.g. speech input, touch, gestures,tangible interfaces)

This session, in continuity with the STS held by our dear colleague Art Karshmer, intends to bring together experts from around the world to present and discuss the state of the art, the actual research and development activities and the future perspectives in access to mathematics, science and statistics. It is the aim of the meeting to find ways how the potential of ICT and AT could lead to advancments in education and career of disabled students, in particular, those with a print disability, in fields where advanced skills in mathematics are necessary.

Chairs

• 
  Dominique Archambault, Universite Paris8
• 
  Katsuhito Yamaguchi, Nihon University
• 
  Georgios Kouroupetroglou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece