MicrosoftThe world of STEM is forever grateful to Peter Wu for answering my plea for help on LinkedIn when I was 'low on spoons' and buried in inaccessible math equations for courses I design at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering. Our work has been featured in Hopkins Engineering Magazine with the opening line, "We met over 1000 inaccessible equations."
The massive updates to Microsoft math were born from a disabled student and a disabled teacher who reached out to Microsoft for support through a single LinkedIn post that Peter answered 3 minutes later on a Sunday afternoon. Ailee Dixon was my high school science student as a Home Hospital Teacher for our local district. She was paralyzed when we met in 9th grade and pushed out of high school without her degree because her disabilities were inconvenient for our district. After earning her HS degree on her own, she was pushed out of nursing school after losing her vision when her faculty said blindness was a liability and their courses were not accessible. As a teacher and now STEM faculty and engineering instructional designer at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, I'm not putting up with the continued leaks in the STEM pipeline. Ailee now presents all over the world with Peter and I about the powerful role of accessibility in equitable access to STEM.
I'd encourage you to follow Peter Wu, Clint Covington, Ailee Dixon, and I on LinkedIn where we continue to share accessibility updates across the M365 platform and the impact on real users - students, educators, and working professionals. Our #Microsoft365Math work is proof that one student, one educator, and one software developer truly can forever change the world of math and 'who gets to be' in STEM.
