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Michele A. Williams (formerly Burton)
Email: mawilliams [at] umbc [dot] edu
Web: http://www.michele-williams.com
Education
Ph.D. Human-Centered Computing; University of Maryland, Baltimore County
- Concentration in Accessibility and Assistive Technology
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January 2011 – Present |
Masters of Software Engineering (M.S.W.E.); Auburn University
- Concentration in Human-Computer Interaction
- Master’s Thesis: “Nel: A Spoken Language Physics Tutor”
- NSF Alabama LSAMP Fellowship Recipient
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May 2005 |
B.S. Computer Science; Bowie State University
- Summa Cum Laude
- NSF Model Institutions for Excellence (MIE) Graduate Program Fellow
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May 2003 |
Professional Experience
Accessibility Analyst; SSB BART Group
- Validated websites, software, and hardware against accessibility requirements such as Section 508 and WCAG
- Executed manual and assistive technology tests across a given IT system
- Wrote reports of findings and recommendations for remediation including code examples where applicable
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2010 – 2012 |
Senior Voice User Interface Designer; Convergys Corporation
- Gathered requirements and designed user interfaces for automated interactive voice response (IVR) telephone systems
- Conducted usability testing for designs in-progress and wrote final report
- Selected to prepare and conduct internal training for new employees
- Selected to present at industry conference (SpeechTEK)
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2005 – 2010 |
Technical Skills
| Languages – HTML, XML, JavaScript, CSS, Perl, VoiceXML, C++, Java, PHP, SQL, MySQL |
| Assistive Technology – JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, ZoomText |
| Accessibility Standards – WCAG 2.0, Section 508, Section 508 Refresh |
Research Experience
Accessible Fashion Project; University of Maryland, Baltimore County
- Utilize qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore making fashion accessible for people with vision impairments, including conduct interviews, create online surveys, and analyze observational data
- Mentor and manage multiple undergraduate students from multiple universities who are assisting with research
- Consistently present research to relevant conferences and have submitted to a fashion journal
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2011 – Present |
Building Intelligent Tutoring Systems Course; Carnegie Mellon University
- Learned Jess production rule language and Java NetBeans to create an Intelligent Tutoring System within a team
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Summer 2004 |
NSF Science, Engineering, and Math Fellowship; Bowie State University
- Executed Java to create a graphical user interface for an inference engine
- Presented research at numerous research conferences as an undergraduate
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2001 – 2003 |
Summer Intern; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Handled tasks related to IT Security including wireless device detection using sniffer software and incident response
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Summer 2002 |
Summer Intern; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Assisted development of website for IT Security Branch using Dreamweaver
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Summer 2001 |
NSF Science, Engineering, and Math Fellowship; Bowie State University
- Collaborated with Smithsonian Museum on Virtual Calipers Project (Web-based three-dimensional measurement tool)
- Independently learned Java 1.2
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2000 – 2001 |
Publications/Presentations
| Preliminary Investigation of the Limitations Fashion Presents to Those with Vision Impairment; Fashion Practice: The Journal of Design, Creative Process & the Fashion Industry, Volume 5, Issue 1 |
May 2013 |
| Crowdsourcing Subjective Question Answering: Insights from Research on Accessible Fashion; 16th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing Workshop on Social Media Question Asking |
February 2013 |
| Crowdsourcing Subjective Fashion Advice Using VizWiz: Challenges and Opportunities; 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS) |
October 2012 |
| Making Fashion Accessible for People with Vision Impairments; Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing |
October 2012 |
| Making Fashion Accessible for People with Vision Impairments; IEEE 10th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Workshop on Frontiers in Accessibility |
June 2012 |
| Using Wearable Technology to Make Fashion Accessible; IEEE 16th International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) Doctoral Consortium |
June 2012 |
| Making Fashion Accessible for People with Vision Impairments; Capital Region Celebration of Women in Computing (CAPWIC) |
April 2012 |
| Fashion for the Blind: A Study of Perspectives;13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS) |
October 2011 |
| Developers and Accessibility – When Do They Meet? 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS) |
October 2010 |
| “I Found 20 Results.” … Now What? – An Analysis of List Presentation; SpeechTEK Conference |
August 2010 |
| Style Guides: Is Your Design Coordinated? SpeechTEK Conference |
August 2009 |
| Nel: An Animated Physics Tutor; AACE World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Health, & Higher Education |
October 2004 |
Teaching Experience
| Volunteer Teacher, “PC Basics”; So Others Might Eat (SOME) Charity |
Summer 2012 – Present |
| Guest Lecture, “Web Accessibility”; User Interface Design (IS 403), UMBC |
Spring 2012 |
| Guest Lecture, “Universal Usability”; Fundamentals of HCI (IS 303), UMBC |
Spring 2012 |
| Guest Lecture, “Universal Usability”; Advanced Interface Design (ART 434), UMBC |
Spring 2012 |
| Guest Lecture, “Accessibility Overview”; User Interface Design (IS 403), UMBC |
Fall 2010 |
