Brandon Biggs
EDUCATION:
- PhD in Human Centered Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA - 2025 (In progress)
- MDes in Inclusive Design from OCAD University, Toronto ON - 2019 (Designing Accessible Maps)
- BA in music (Minor in Marketing) from CSU East Bay, Hayward CA - 2016 (3.830 GPA with honors institute)
- AA Honors degree in General Music from Foothill College, Los Altos CA - 2012
PUBLICATIONS:
- Paper: Walmer, A., Cash, N., Yin, W., Majors, T., Biggs, B., & Walker, B. N. ACCESSIBLE SONIFICATION OF TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE 2024: ACCESSIBLE MAP AND MULTIMODAL VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCE. Published in the International Conference on Auditory Display, 2024.
- Paper: Biggs, B., Agbaroji, H., Toth, C., Stockman, T., Coughlan, J., & Walker, B. (2024). Co-designing auditory navigation solutions for traveling as a blind individual during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vol. 14, no. 1. Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research. PMC11034939.
- Paper: Biggs, B., Toth, C., Stockman, T., Coughlan, J., & Walker, B. (2022). Evaluation of a Non-Visual Auditory Choropleth and Travel Map Viewer. Published in the International Conference on Auditory Display, 2022. PMCID: PMC10010675.
- Abstract: Biggs, B., Toth, C., Stockman, T., Tupy, S., Coughlan, J., & Walker, B. (2022). Audiom: An auditory web-based geographic map viewer showing COVID-19 state data and a travel map. Published in the International Conference on Auditory Display, 2022.
- Paper: Coughlan, J., Biggs, B., & Shen, H. (2022). Non-Visual Access to an Interactive 3D Map. In Joint International Conference on Digital Inclusion, Assistive Technology & Accessibility (ICCHP-AAATE '22). PMCID: PMC9467469.
- Paper: Biggs, B., Pitcher-Cooper, C., & Coughlan, J. (2022). Getting in Touch With Tactile Map Automated Production: Evaluating impact and areas for improvement. Journal on Technology and Persons with Disabilities, 10.
- Chapter: Biggs, B., Siu, A. F., Aziz, N., & Stockman, T. (2022). Remote Co-Design in the Digital Age. In: Rioux M.H., Viera J., Buettgen A., Zubrow E. (eds) Handbook of Disability. Springer, Singapore.
- Abstract: Coughlan, J. M., Biggs, B., & Shen, H. (2021). Point and Listen: Bringing a 3D Map to Life with Audio-Based AR. Frameless 4.1 (2022).
- Paper: Biggs, B., Coughlan, J. M., & Coppin, P. (2021). Design and evaluation of an interactive 3D map. Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, 2021.
- Paper: Coughlan, J. M., Biggs, B., Rivière, M. A., & Shen, H. (2020). An Audio-Based 3D Spatial Guidance AR System for Blind Users. In International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (pp. 475-484). Springer, Cham.
- Paper: Coughlan, J., Shen, H., & Biggs, B. (2020). Towards accessible audio labeling of 3D objects. Journal on Technology and Persons with Disabilities, 8.
- Paper: Biggs, B., Coughlan, J., Coppin, P. (2019). Design And Evaluation Of An Audio Game-Inspired Auditory Map Interface. Published in the International Conference on Auditory Display, 2019.
- Master's Thesis: Biggs, B. (2019). Designing Accessible Nonvisual Maps. Ontario College of Art and Design University.
- Abstract: Biggs, B., Yusum, L., Ghodke, U., & Coppin, P. (2018). The aesthetics of 2D versus 3D Tactile Representations. International Association of Empirical Aesthetics international conference 2018.
- Abstract: Biggs, B., Yusim, L., Coppin, P. (2018). The Audio Game Laboratory. Published in the International Conference of Cognitive Semiotics (IACS) 2018.
- Abstract: Biggs, B., Yusim, L., Coppin, P. (2018). The Audio Game Laboratory: Building maps from games. Published in the International Conference on Auditory Display, 2018.
Professional Presentations:
- NFB National 2024: Join the Voyage for Inclusive Digital Maps. July 2024, in-person.
- CSUN, guest lecture in Seminar in Human Characteristics in Relation to Usability of Assistive Technology Devices course: Inclusive Design in Practice, April 3, 2024 remote.
- CSUN 2024: The First WCAG AAA Compliant Digital Campus Map, March 2024 in-person.
- CSUN 2024: The Future of Inclusive Digital Indoor Maps and Navigation, March 2024 in-person.
- CSUN 2024: The Digital Drawing WYSIWYG Editor for Blind Users is Here, March 2024 in-person.
- Accessing Higher Ground: Making Inclusive Digital Campus Maps, November 2023 in-person.
- Remarkable Tech Summit: XR Navigation Startup Pitch. October 2023 in-person.
- Functional Vision and Accessibility (FVA) Conference: XR through the senses: navigating the cross-sensory digital frontier. August 2023, presenter, in-person.
- American Foundation for The Blind Leadership Conference: What is the role of sighted assistance in accessible navigation? What does an inclusive Digital wayfinding experience to and Around Your Facility entail? May 2023 in-person.
- VR4VIP: Non-Verbal Non-Visual Social Interactions in VR. January 2023, Presenter, remote.
- Sight Tech Global: What does non-visual access to the metaverse mean? December 2022, panelist, remote
- Affordable Degrees at Scale Symposium: Accessibility Panel, December 2022, panelist, remote
- CREATE + Taskar Center Panel: Entrepreneurship and Translation in Accessible Technologies, October 2022, Panelist, remote
- Live2Learn Inclusive Design Research Conference June 2022, panelist, Panel discussion on Inclusive Design Research: Challenging Times, Creative Solutions – Where do we go from here?
- International Conference on Auditory Display June 2022, installation/presenter: Audiom - An auditory web-based geographic map viewer showing COVID-19 state data and a travel map
- American Foundation for the Blind Leadership Conference May 2022, panelist, Wayfinding Technology at Work: Tackling Indoor Navigation Challenges
- Intuit September 2021, guest speaker, Lunch and Learn, Data Through the Ears
- OCADU September 2021, guest speaker, Art in Sound: A non-visual Gallery experience, Multisensory Museum Course
- U.S. Access Board July 2021, Audiom: The world's most inclusive map viewer, Remote
- OCADU July 2021, guest speaker, Auditory Symbols, Cognitive Semiotics Lab
- RESNA July 2021, Design and evaluation of an interactive 3D map, Remote
- CSUN Assistive Technology Conference March 2021, Inclusive COVID Map Viewer, Remote
- State of the Science, Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Low Vision and Blindness November 2020, (3 sessions), Challenges During COVID, Participation in High Tech (lead panelist), and Problems faced by Blind and Visually Impaired Researchers, remote
- W3C/OGC Maps for the Web September 2020, (3 presentations), introduction to Nonvisual Maps, Nonvisual Map Q&A panel, and building nonvisual maps using Audiom, remote
- Jewish High Tech Community Center June 2020, The Future of Accessibility, remote
- CSUN March 2020, (three presentations), CamIO, Audiom, and creation of an XR Navigation Experience, Anaheim CA
- FWD 50 November 2019, Meet the Innovative Design for Accessibility Winners, Ottawa ON
- California Association of Orientation and Mobility Specialists November 2019, Future of Nonvisual Mapping, Monterey CA
- International Conference on Auditory Display June 2019, Poster session, Design and Evaluation of an Audio Game Inspired Interface, Newcastle Northumberland
- International Conference of Cognitive Semiotics July 2018, The Audio Game Laboratory, Toronto ON
- International Conference on Auditory Display June 2018, The Audio Game Laboratory: Building maps from games, Houghton MI
- International Conference on Auditory Display Student Think Tank June 2018, presenter, Houghton MI
Publicity
- 📢 99% Of Maps Are 'Blank' for the Blind. XR Navigation Is Changing That. August 2024.
- Georgia Tech's Sonification Lab Revolutionizes Eclipse Experience for Visually Impaired. April 2024
- The Blind Life CSUN Spotlight With XR Navigation. March 2024.
- Disability Tech Talk with XR Navigation. July 2023
- Changing What’s Possible: The Disability Innovation Podcast, Making Maps More Accessible with XR Navigation – Part 1, June 2023
- Changing What’s Possible: The Disability Innovation Podcast, Making Maps More Accessible with XR Navigation – Part 2, June 2023
- AT BANTER PODCAST 2022, AT BANTER EPISODE 314 – BRANDON BIGGS & AUDIO NAVIGATION
- Blindabilities 2022, Audiom: Audio Maps for the Blind. Welcome back Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute Engineer, Brandon Biggs and Meet Christopher Toth, Blind Applications Engineer
- Blind Bargains 2022, Audio: Inclusive Map Viewing Through Any Browser With Audiom
- KT Casebook 9th Edition, 2022. Audiom: The World’s Most Inclusive Map Viewer.
- Get Art Done! 2021, Cross-Sensory Artwork with Brandon Biggs
- Blind Abilities 2021, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute is Listening to the Future of Navigation – Meet Engineer, Brandon Biggs
- Blind Bargains 2020, Expanding VR And AR Into XR With The Smith-Kettlewell | Eye Research Institute, A T Guys
- The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2020. Brandon Biggs brings his ideas for accessibility to SKERI.
- Interview in WorldBound Magazine 2019, Mapping the Way, Università Cattolica Milano
- Sofia Sees Hope 2018, Brandon Biggs: A 360-degree View of One Man’s LCA Journey.
AWARDS:
- Young Researchers Consortium recipient 2022, International Conference on Computers Helping People
- Student Think Tank Recipient 2022, International Conference on Auditory Display
- IPaT Fellowship 2021, Georgia Institute of Technology.
- Recipient, Dr. Arthur I. Karshmer Award for Assistive Technology Research for the 2020 CSUN Assistive Technology conference
- First place, Technological/communication barriers, Innovative Designs for Accessibility 2019
- Student Think Tank Recipient 2018, International Conference on Auditory Display
- Create Data Analytics and Visualization trainee from fall 2017- Spring 2019
- Recipient, 2016 Kathryn Harvey Award National Association of Teachers of Singing, Annually awarded to the university aged winner of the Northern California NATS competition
- Recipient, 2012 NFB Scholarship, 1 of 12 selected nationally each year
- Dale M. Schoettler Scholarship for Visually Impaired Students, Recipient 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015
Grants:
- Technology Transfer Grant, Audiom: Developing an Indoor Non-Visual Mapping System, June 2023, National Eye Institute from National Institutes of Health grant No. 1R41EY034411-01A1, Principal Investigator, $275,766.
- Audiom, September 2022, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), Grant No. 90REGE0018, project lead, $4,625,000
- Audiom, June 2021, Impact Startup through NIDILRR, Principal Investigator, $25,000
- Audiom, September 2020, COVID Supplement, National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health grant no. R01EY029033, Key Personnel, $406,525
- Audiom, September 2020, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) grant no. 90IFDV0020-01-00, Key Personnel, $695,856
- Audiom, September 2019, Diversity Supplement, National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health grant no. R01EY029033, Key Personnel, $105,337
Patents:
- Patent Pending. (2021). Systems and Methods for Digital Auditory Mapping. Application No. US20220018679A1. United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Research Positions:
- Sonification Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-present, Bruce Walker
- Coughlan Lab, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2019-present, James Coughlan
- Perceptual Artefacts Lab, Ontario College of Art and Design University, 2017-2019, Peter Coppin
Research Interests:
- Nonvisual and cross-sensory digital representations
- Inclusive Design
- X Reality, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality for nonvisual users
- Technology transfer, knowledge transfer, small business, action research, and entrepreneurship
Student Supervision and Interns:
- High School Intern Summer 2021
- One grad student supervision fall 2021
- Nine (6 grad, 3 undergrad) student supervisions Spring 2022
- Two (1 grad, 1 undergrad) student supervisions Summer 2022
- One intern Summer 2022
- Four (1 grad, 3 undergrad) student supervisions Fall 2022
- Five (2 grad, 3 undergrad) student supervisions Spring 2023
- Six (2 grad, 4 undergrad) student supervisions Fall 2023
- Five (2 grad, 3 undergrad) student supervisions Spring 2024
BUSINESS WORK EXPERIENCE:
- Engineer I, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, Fall 2019 - Present. Lead the Magic Map project, building an accessible, cross-sensory XR map for the Magical Bridge playground in Palo Alto. Lead the Audiom project to provide a cross-sensory digital map component, managed developers, created the design, and developed the auditory map experience. Designed CamIO application and performed studies on the interface. Performed studies evaluating the TMAPs project.
- CEO and founder, XR Navigation, May 2020, present. Oversaw development of an XR cross-sensory navigational experience at the Magical Bridge Playground in Palo Alto utilizing CamIO, Audiom, and an indoor wayfinding application.
- Chief Financial Officer, co-founder, board treasurer, Sonja Biggs Educational Services, Inc. from fall 2015-August 2023. Grew revenue 2300% in eight years from $130,000-3,000,000, led incorporation, built finance, HR, and management teams, wrote employee handbook, created pay schedule, developed interview and onboarding process, maintain financials, manage finance team, developed marketing mix, led development of a training program for four employee categories, created tech rental program, developed logging system, and created standards for system acquisition. Researched and implemented accessible systems for timekeeping, finance, logging, payroll, and document management. Taught students and teachers assistive technology (AT), and managed company IT and AT.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:
- Designed and managed the creation of a professional services automation system progressive web app for log entry and report generation. Wrote the specifications, created milestones and deliverables, managed front-end and back-end programmers, performed user testing, and managed migration from a Google sheets based system to this system. The system ran on Postgres, React, AG Grid, React Admin, and FeathersJS.
- Designed and tested CamIO (Camera Input Output), a computer vision application to annotate 3D objects. Designed and tested the IOS app, and performed studies evaluating the user experience.
- Lead development on Audiom (audiom.xrnavigation.io), a cross-sensory web component tool using JavaScript, Node and React. Developed the Auditory experience using Web Audio API, event handling, collision detection, Web Speech API, Aria, and state management. Managed developers to meet deadlines, and performed user testing. Along with the team, developed on the full application stack (front-end and back-end) using Node, Express, FeathersJS, Postgress SQL, Sequelize, React, Auth0, and Vaadin components.
- Lead a team in building a trimodal cross-sensory map for the Magical Bridge Foundation that I used in a co-design and study. The map will be placed in every MB playground. The map consisted of a miniature 3D tactile representation of the playground combined with a 3D auditory landscape that users heard as they moved a stylus around the map. When they touched the stylus to an object, it spoke the label of that object using CamIO.
- Created a MUD map of and for the inclusive design exhibition at the International Conference of Cognitive semiotics 2018 using Evennia (python mud framework) and AWS EC2.
- Built a prototype nonvisual baby doppler monitor using Arduino that plays a song at the tempo of the heartbeat, unless the heartbeat is out of the expected range, then it plays an alarm.
- Created an auditory data visualization of Charles Minard's infographic of Napoleon's March of 1812 using React, Web Audio API, Web Speech API, and Aria that was based off a co-design session I coordinated with 5 blind users.
- Built an auditory globe using React, web Audio API, web speech API, and aria incorporating collision detection in multipolygons from geojson data, and implemented latitude and longitude in a non-Euclidean plane.
- Created the software for a multisensory art exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Created a Python-based dynamic soundscape with 3D panning and event handler running on pyaudiogame and Pygame on a raspberry pi and Arduino.
- Created and manage the EmpowermentZone GitHub organization page, run their email list, and manage their GitHub projects.
- Created Pyaudiogame, an audiogame library based off pygame that is on PyPi, developed the event system, created algorithms for 3D audio, Cartesian plane navigation with polygon placement and collision detection, keymap, ability to use both console and pygame input and output, allows TTS output and managed the GitHub repository.
- Built a system for service logs in Google Apps Scripting (JavaScript) that was used for four years by all SBES employees and handled over 10000 logs a year. The system used GSheets as the database and viewer. Created text parsing from submissions to fill other fields and error check, automated the creation of new sheets when customers were added, created a batch log entry system, and created invoice totals with multiple price books.
- Developed an engine for console adventure games in python, did system input, made the event system and main loop.
- Made an inclusively designed flashcard game in Python using the Ivona Web Speech API, Pygame and accessible_output2.
- Manage and created my own website, brandonkeithbiggs.com using WordPress. Built my own child theme using PHP.
- Led a group in the design thinking process as a part of the product and pricing class at CSU East Bay.
- Manage the development of a full visually impaired program service and product bundle at SBESInc that has increased sales over 1400% in five years.
TECHNICAL SKILLS:
- Languages: JavaScript, Python, SQL, Google Apps Script, Arduino, HTML
- Server Frameworks: Express, Feathers, NoteJS, Django
- Web Frontend Frameworks: React, JQuery
- Knowledge of Aria and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1)
- Application Engines: Panda3D, Pygame, Pyglet
- Content Management Systems: WordPress
- Knowledge of Git, GitHub, AWS, Heroku, and Google Cloud
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY and code contributions:
- Have made several pull requests on the WebXR specification increasing the use of nonvisual language and connecting the visual API to the audio API
- Do frequent user experience and web accessibility reviews for QuickBooks Online from Intuit, 2016-present. Describe how to fix elements with Aria and HTML, present inclusive design techniques at internal conferences, and suggest component design.
- Open accessibility-related issues and pull requests on opensource projects including Vaadin Components, Mozilla Hubs, IBM-Carbon-React, AccDC -React, tenon-ui, storybook, Cupper, and freeCodeCamp.
- Frequently open bugs and suggest solutions on projects such as OpenCV, GSuite products, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, IOS, Windows, and NVDA.
- Taught assistive technology privately at CSU East Bay (January 2016 to June 2016).
- Use screen reading technology such as NVDA, Voiceover and Jaws, used accessible PDAs, Braille displays and other tech daily from 2005 to present.
- Private contracted with Vista Center for the Blind as a technology teacher, teaching Jaws and basic computer skills in the summer of 2012.
ACTIVITIES AND SKILLS:
- Public Speaking: Spoke on numerous youth panels and led workshops at conferences with CTEBVI, CAOMS, ACB, NFB, Vista Center and Lions Club.
- Went to Italy on a yearlong study abroad program to learn Italian and business in 2014
- Languages: Speaks English fluently and Italian conversationally
- Is a professional Opera singer
- Theater & Film: Performed in nineteen musicals and films including Beauty & the Beast, La Boheme, Les Miserables, Oliver, Fiddler, and Camelot
- Expert at working remotely: completed two years of master's degree and worked since 2015 years at SBES remotely, and worked since 2020 at Smith-Kettlewell remotely