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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 (*).

* Nominee Name:
* Your First Name:
* Your Last Name:
* Your State:
* Your Phone Number:
* Your Email Address:
* Your Relationship to Nominee:

Please enter your letter of recommendation in the text area provided below: Mary Stores 2709 E. 10th St. Bloomington, IN 47408 mstores@iu.edu (812) 856-2760 04/10/2023 Dear Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award Committee, I first met Neil Soiffer at an Accessing Higher Ground conference in Denver, Colorado back in 2015. Since that time, he has come to lots of other conferences and participated in working groups. He attended a STEM conference in 2020 where a colleague, Brian Richwine, and I presented about how screen readers were failing to speak math correctly. We began working a lot with him since then, because he listened to our presentation and asked if we’d be willing to provide feedback for the improvement of MathCAT. In 2021 and 2022 Brian and I conducted interviews with blind people with varying levels of math experience. In 2022 we designed a quiz for screen reader users to take, and the collected feedback from them about that experience. We sent Neil the notes we took, as well as the test files we used during our interviews. Neil thanked me for sending that along, and then he implemented people’s suggestions for improving math accessibility in MathCAT. Neil has long been interested in improving math accessibility for everyone. I know he was involved in the development of at least one math grammar, as well as MathPlayer. I applaud his efforts, and believe that because of his work, people who are blind will have both braille and speech access to math in the future that is error-free. I sincerely hope that the NFB will recognize the great work Neil has done over the many years by awarding him the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Sincerely, Mary Stores
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The Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award

Letter of Recommendation Form