Shari Trewin

Dr. Shari Trewin is an accessibility researcher at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, New York. The Accessibility Research Group works to support technology users with physical, sensory or cognitive impairments. Shari has been working with people with disabilities since 1989. Her research focus is on physical control of information technology, software for enhancing physical control, and access to technologies via standard abstract interfaces. She was part of the team that created the award-winning IBM Web Adaptation Technology, and also developed the Keyboard Optimizer, a keyboard configuration utility that adapts the keyboard accessibility features to suit the user's typing style. She is currently developing and testing several new cursor control utilities.

Dr. Trewin also serves as co-editor of the ANSI "Universal Remote Console" suite of standards for remote control of devices and services. These standards allow people to use a personal device as an alternative to the built-in user interfaces of network accessible products such as household devices, public access devices, or web services. This capability is particularly important for those who cannot effectively use the default interfaces on products, but is also vital for multi-device access to such products in pervasive computing. The URC standards were developed by the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Technical Committee V2 (INCITS V2). The standards are ANSI INCITS 389-2005 to 393-2005.

Shari joined the Accessibility Research Group in 2000 from the University of Edinburgh, where she focused on intelligent tutoring systems for music education. Her Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh consisted of a dynamic diagnostic model of the keyboard configuration requirements of users. She received the Best Student Paper Award for her Ph.D. research entitled "A model of keyboard configuration requirements" at the 1998 ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies.