For more than a quarter century, Vicki Hanson has worked in fields related to individuals with disabilities. From 1978–1986, she conducted research in the areas of American Sign Language (ASL) and reading, first as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Language and Cognition at the Salk Institute and then as a Research Associate in the Reading Research Group at Haskins Laboratories.
In 1986, Dr. Hanson joined the IBM Research Division and currently manages the Accessibility Research Group at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center. Her primary research areas consist of computer usability, Web access, and reading and language processing in learning environments. In federally funded research, she has worked extensively with Deaf children and adults; more recent work includes older adults who use computers.
Dr. Hanson is chair of the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing and has won several awards for her computer applications work. The author of more than 70 peer-reviewed papers and conference presentations, she is also a frequent keynote speaker at scientific conferences.
Dr. Hanson received a B.A. from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Oregon.
