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.

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