As the Senior Director of Disability & Accessibility for CAST, Luis promotes the creation, delivery and use of high quality accessible educational materials and technologies to support learning opportunities for all students. He is embedded with the Postsecondary and Workforce Development group at CAST, and in this role works to increase access to middle- and high-income careers for everyone. Luis is also a co-host of the CAST podcast, The Learning Experience, with new episodes launching monthly. His perspective is informed by his own experiences as a user of assistive technology.
Luis is the Principal Investigator for the Center for Inclusive Technology and Education Systems (CITES) at CAST, which aims to empower school districts to build and maintain technology systems that include every student, particularly children and youth with disabilities who require assistive technology and accessible materials. Outside of CAST, Luis is also a co-Principal Investigator on the Resource Collaborative for Immersive Technologies (RECITE) and its related project KonnectXR. These two National Science Foundation-funded projects seek to improve STEM technician education through the accelerated integration of cutting-edge extended reality technologies into technician classrooms.
Luis was recognized with a 2020 ISTE Making It Happen award. Other recognitions include Apple Distinguished Educator (2009) and Google Certified Innovator (2014). He has published three books on accessibility, mobile learning, and UDL: Mobile Learning for All (Corwin Press), Dive into UDL (with Kendra Grant; ISTE, 2018) and Learning on the Go (CAST, 2018). He currently serves as a Workplace and Assistive Technology strand advisor for the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA).
In addition to his work in educational technology, Luis is an avid photographer whose work has been featured on Better Photography magazine, Business Insider, the New York Times Bits Blog and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Education
Ph. D., Special Education, University of South Florida
M. Ed., Instructional Technology, University of South Florida
B.A., Political Science, Haverford College
What losing my vision taught me about access
Luis was selected as one of the first educators in the U.S. to go through the TED-Ed Educator Talks program. His submitted talk at the end of the program was chosen for presentation at the 2018 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference. A version of the talk was then delivered at the TED studios in New York and is used as an exemplar by TED-Ed.