Chieko Asakawa
Chieko Asakawa
Chieko Asakawa has been instrumental in furthering accessibility research and development for three decades. Series of pioneering technologies led by Chieko significantly contributed in advancing web accessibility and usability, including groundbreaking work in digital braille and voice web browser. Today, Chieko is focusing on advancing cognitive assistant research to help the blind regain information by augmenting missing or weakened abilities in the real world.
Chieko is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and IBM Academy of Technology. She became an IBM Fellow in 2009, IBM’s most prestigious technical honor. She was the 2011 winner of the ABIE Award for Technical Leadership, and won the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon from the government of Japan in 2013. She has been also serving as an IBM Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University since 2014.