Marco plays the piano and loves to cook. With the Holman Prize, he would travel with the ice hockey team, the San Jose Sharks, to their away games and evaluate the accessibility of the various arenas.
Accessibility
Nate Barnes
Nate is a musician and a producer. With the Holman Prize, he would open a music technology lab and teach blind and visually impaired individuals with accessible tools.
Garrett Roark
Garrett is a pastor, musician and horseback rider. With the Holman Prize, he would develop technological tools to help blind people navigate in public restrooms.
Chad Allen
Chad has been a performing magician for over twenty years. He would use the Holman Prize to digitize notable magic books, making them accessible for the first time to blind people.
Andrew Kranichfeld
Andrew is the author of two children’s books. With the Holman Prize, he would create a dating app for people with disabilities that would include inclusive features like captions and audio clips.
Zackery Hurtz
Zackery is a musician and an entrepreneur. He would use the Holman Prize to develop Reference Point Navigation, which provides indoor and outdoor access to information and navigation on mobile phones that is accessible to blind people.
Dr. Sile O’Modhrain
A professor in performing arts technology at the school of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of Michigan, Sile O’Modhrain brings a wide breadth of personal and professional skill to the Holman Prize committee. With past careers in sound engineering, technology, music and more – and passionate study in the fields of arts, assistive technology, and haptics – O’Modhrain is constantly in search of better ways for blind people to access information and work in the world.
Rachel Longan
Rachel, a psychotherapist and singer, would use the Holman Prize to travel both the United States, and around the world to countries like Russia and Tanzania, teaching pre-existing vocal choirs how to make their organizations more accessible and accommodating for blind and low-vision participants.
Vincent Otyang
Vincent, who is originally from Uganda, would use the Holman Prize to travel to Scandinavia to learn more about various accessible technologies, and subsequently teach his peers in California about them.
Nathan Gibbs
Nathan, a tech consultant and web developer, would use the Holman Prize to continue his “As Alexa Sees It” project, which is intended to make Amazon’s Echo technology even more useful for blind and low-vision consumers.