School of Information Sciences

Seo receives grant to improve accessibility in scientific and technical publishing

JooYoung Seo
JooYoung Seo, Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor JooYoung Seo has been awarded a $54,000 grant from RStudio, PBC to make its open-source scientific and technical publishing system Quarto more accessible. For his project, "Improving Accessible Reproducibility for Data Science Publishing System," he will collaborate with RStudio, PBC to develop and improve accessibility components of Quarto for people with and without dis/abilities.

"The system is reproducible and language-agnostic, but there is much room for accessibility improvement to be inclusive of users with diverse abilities," said Seo. "By addressing the last puzzle piece, this project will contribute to improving accessible reproducibility for people with all abilities across STEM, computer science, digital humanities, and social science."

Seo's research focuses on how to make computational literacy more accessible to people with dis/abilities using multimodal data representation. His projects have involved not only web accessibility but also human-centered design and development studies, such as inclusive makerspaces, tangible block-based programming, tablet-based haptic feedback of knowledge structure, accessible data science, and accessible/reproducible scientific writing tools for people with and without disabilities.

Seo is an RStudio double-certified data science instructor and accessibility expert who is certified by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). He earned his PhD from the Learning, Design, and Technology Program at Pennsylvania State University.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

2025 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award given to Nicole A. Cooke

Nicole A. Cooke has been named the 2025 recipient of the Downs Intellectual Freedom Award for her advocacy, groundbreaking research, and dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion within the field of library and information science. Cooke is the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair and professor in the College of Information and Communications at the University of South Carolina.

Nicole Cooke

iSchool researchers to present work at CVPR Conference

Assistant Professors Ismini Lourentzou and Yaoyao Liu, along with students from their labs, will present their research at the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), held in Denver, Colorado, from June 3–7. CVPR is the flagship annual meeting of IEEE/CVF and PAMI-TC, where researchers present their latest advances in computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence, both in theory and practice. 

iSchool alumni named 2026 Movers & Shakers

Two iSchool alumni are included in Library Journal's 2026 class of Movers & Shakers, an annual list that recognizes 50 professionals who are moving the library field as a profession. Leah T. Dudak (MSLIS '17) was honored in the Advocates category and Mariella Colon (MSLIS '07) was honored in the Community Builders category. 

iSchool researchers to present at ChLA 2026

iSchool faculty and staff will present their research at the Children's Literature Association (ChLA) annual conference, which will be held from May 28-30 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The theme of this year's conference is "Neighbors and Neighborhoods in Children's Literature, Media, and Culture."

Wang Group to present work at ICWSM 2026

Professor Dong Wang and PhD student Ruichen Yao will present their research at the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) 2026, which will take place May 27–29 in Los Angeles, bringing together researchers from around the world to study the intersection of social media, society, and technology. The conference is widely recognized as a premier venue for computational social science and social computing, with a highly selective acceptance process.

Dong Wang

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top