GLOBAL SYMBOLS CIC - Key Persons
Charlie Danger is an experienced and creative occupational therapist and assistive technology professional, passionate about the role of technology in enabling individuals to participate in fulfilling and meaningful lives. He has worked as an assistive technology practitioner since 1999 in many diverse settings including statutory and higher education, healthcare, the workplace, and in the community. He co-established a very early SEND assistive technology outreach service in 2001 and managed a project to create the first national AT/AAC clinical service in the Middle East and more recently contributed to the Global Symbols online training with advice and guidance around hands-on use of AAC and AT whilst also acting as a consultant for several UK and international charities.
David Banes is an independent consultant with over 30 years experience of supporting access and inclusion through technology. He is a Board Member at DATEurope. David is also former CEO of Mada (Qatar Assistive Technology Center) and works extensively across the world supporting the implementation of assistive technologies. He has a particular interest in supporting the needs of refugees and those in Low and Medium income countries and the potential of emerging technologies.
E.A. Draffan trained as a Speech and Language Therapist working with those who have complex communication needs, specialising in the use of Assistive Technology and digital accessibility. Over the years she has worked in clinics, schools, further and higher education setting up an assistive technology centre, working with a UK national assistive technology hub, before becoming a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. Research has included collaboration in the development of resources for AAC users in Qatar, development of accessible digital technologies, MOOCs and other elearning projects.
Russell Newman has managed his own successful company Newman Consulting for over 17 years providing proactive guidance, planning and implementation for a range of SMEs across the country. Global Symbols became part of his protfolio having worked with the University of Southampton ECS accessibility team over many years. He not only designs and maintains the Global Symbols multilingual website, but has also set up the voting system for symbol set reviews and acceptance, whilst taking on further development and updating of Board Builder and Symbol Creator.
Steve Lee is a seasoned developer consultant with wide expertise including in accessibility, assistive technology, music technology, open development, modern web, mobile and cloud technologies. His personal mission is to enhance technology experiences for all, through development, training, guidance and support in accessibility, cloud, standards and collaborative development. He has launched several open accessibility innovation community sites designed to encourage end users and developers to collaborate. In 2018 he took on the copyright of the open licenced Mulberry Symbols that have been used in our AI / AAC pilot projects.
Chaohai Ding has been working on several research projects related to Web and Internet Science. His PhD and particular interests in digital accessibility have led to work on AI for Good as part of the Alan Turing AI and Inclusion project integration of machine learning with semantic embedding and image recognition to aid the classification of AAC symbols. More recently he has been using generative AI to trial the creation of AAC symbols in the style of open licence symbol sets as part of a University of Southampton Web Science Institute collaborative project.