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The Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award

Letter of Recommendation Form
Thank you for your support of the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards program.
Please complete the form below to submit your letter of recommendation in support of the award nominee. Recommendations cannot exceed 800 words. You will not be able to submit your recommendation if the maximum word count exceeds 800 words.
Please note that recommendations should come from someone other than the person who nominated the candidate. Please note that required fields on this form are indicated by an asterisk (*).

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Please enter your letter of recommendation in the text area provided below: Dear Esteemed Members of the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to express my support for Sam Dooley's nomination for the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award. I had the pleasure of working with Sam at Pearson. In 2014, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) filed a lawsuit against one of Pearson's major customers for purchasing Pearson's inaccessible TestNav product. Sam was the developer of the math equation editor that was a part of TestNav, so my first introduction to him was related to the concerns raised by the NFB. As the newly appointed VP of Accessibility for Pearson Assessments, I arranged classroom visits for the TestNav development team so that they could meet blind students and their teachers. We visited schools in three different districts in the Austin, TX area and Sam was introduced to NFB students, including Su Park and Harley Fetterman. He was also introduced to Susan Osterhaus, Carolyn Mason, and several other Teachers of the Visually Impaired (TVIs). Prior to these classroom visits, Sam had never heard of the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics and Science Notation and he was unfamiliar with the assistive technology tools used by blind students to access digital content. After the classroom visits, Pearson hosted a meeting with subject matter experts (SMEs) in STEM education for blind students, including many of the TVIs who supported the classroom visits. Pearson secured consulting agreements with several of these subject matter experts and with some of the students that Sam had met. Sam stayed in close contact with several of the SMEs and students as he began to work on accessibility issues related to the equation editor. Within just a few short weeks, Sam taught himself the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics and Science Notation and he created a functional solution for instantaneous Nemeth Braille translation that led to a patent. As a former TVI and Assistive Technology Specialist, I have never seen a tool like the Equalize Editor. I have been in this field for 38 years, and in my professional opinion, the Equalize Editor has the potential to remove long-standing access barriers to STEM content for blind people that no other tool can remove. I believe the Equalize Editor can be leveraged by TVI prep programs in Universities to train TVIs. It can support braille literacy for people who become blind as an adult, and it can also support parents who want to help their blind students with their STEM homework. When I went through my TVI program, I took braille as a summer class. It was a six-week class and we spent approximately 3 days on Nemeth. Needless to say, this was not enough time and I was not well equipped to support blind students in STEM. However, with a tool like the Equalize Editor, I could have effectively taught a braille student Nemeth code and strengthened my own knowledge at the same time. The Equalize Editor is the only math editor I have seen that provides instantaneous braille translation without the end user having to take any additional steps. It is also the only editor that I have seen that supports both text and math content within the same editing window. This allows a student to explain their math work, which is a very common requirement in math classes. Even on high stakes assessments, most assessment platforms require students to enter their math in a math editing window and to explain their math in a separate text editor. Text editors, by definition, are not math editors, so students are having to explain their math without being able to use math within the context of their explanation. This creates a cognitive load and introduces construct-irrelevant variance into the assessment because students are having to perform a translation of math into words. This translation is not what is being assessed when students are asked to explain how they used math to solve a problem. Additionally, the cognitive load of having to switch between a math editing window and a text editing window is significant, not to mention the added challenges of trying to do this using a screen reader. Sam has carefully designed the Equalize Editor with these kinds of user needs in mind. He actively pursues feedback from users and subject matter experts to ensure that he is solving the right problems in the right way. In my opinion, the Equalize Editor is a tool that can effectively support braille literacy efforts in a way that has never been available before. I urge you to choose Sam Dooley as a recipient of the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award during the 2024 NFB convention. This would not only be an honor for Sam, but would also allow him to continue working on enhancements. Additionally, this award would raise awareness about the availability of the Equalize Editor so that blind students can leverage the power of this tool to study STEM and to potentially change the trajectory of their lives and future careers. Respectfully, Jan McSorley, CPACCAccessibility Consultant
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The Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award

Letter of Recommendation Form