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A New Role for a Familiar Face

Welcome to Information and Educational Technology, Joshua Hori! Many of you know, or have heard the name Josh Hori, formerly of the Student Disability Center (SDC) and now, as of Feb. 6, 2022, part of IET in Academic Applications.

Meggan Levitt, assistant vice provost/associate CIO for Academic Applications, is excited about the opportunities that will come with this new hire, saying, “One of the goals with this position is to build a culture of accessibility within IET to help us learn from each other and share what we’ve learned with our campus affiliates.”

In 2004, Joshua started at UC Davis as a temporary employee. In 2006, he began his career with the SDC as the accessibility coordinator, the first position of its kind in the UC system. At the SDC, he helped students who had identified accommodation needs find alternative ways of interacting with educational materials. Now that Joshua is with IET, his outreach will expand to all campus affiliates as he helps a much larger clientele with accessibility concerns.

Building on work completed at the SDC, Joshua will also continue researching and demonstrating accessibility tools, such as those he has already compiled in a publicly available accessible technologies Trello board that has been useful to other professionals in the field.

Headshot of Joshua Hori

Joshua is delighted about his new role in IET, saying, “I get a lot of satisfaction when people tell me that using the tools we’ve introduced to them has changed the way they learn in ways that they never thought possible.” Joshua has a learning disability himself (ADHD), and he uses tools that help him with focus, such as text to speech software and LiveScribe, a smart pen. Joshua is looking forward to reviewing and eventually using new tools and modes of communication, including Web 3.0 (NFTs), Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality. In this position, Joshua will help Information and Educational Technology at UC Davis accommodate users in new ways and implement accessibility for better inclusion.

Todd Van Zandt, the ATS manager of Teaching and Learning Technology Services, where Josh’s new position fits, said, “We are excited to have Joshua Hori filling this new position in IET. His knowledge and enthusiasm about the full spectrum of disability accommodations will allow us to provide new resources to the campus, and to advocate for accessibility improvements with our enterprise applications.”

We look forward to working even more closely with Joshua, and we hope you will reach out to him for consultations on any of the topics raised above. Welcome aboard, Josh!

Much of the content in this story was derived from an article written by Ahna Heller, IET Communications Analyst, for the IET Insider. Many thanks to Ahna for allowing us to re-use her prose here!