Robert Gattis
Mr. Gattis is the President and Co-Founder of Meeting the Challenge, Inc. His primary project responsibilities include project management of the DBTAC, the ADA Impact Management System (AIMS), and the Disability Law Knowledge Management System (DLKMS) all funded by the US Department of Education.
His duties on the DBTAC include planning and top-level management. He is currently involved with a working group of other DBTAC project directors to establish the program outcomes for evaluation. AIMS, designed and developed by Mr. Gattis, is used by all ten DBTACs to collect program performance information responsive to the Government Performance and Results Act. The DLKMS project resulted in the ADA Document Portal, a one-stop web site with information about the ADA and other disability laws. The collections now contain over 10,000 individual documents.
Additional project work includes accessible Internet site design and development for the Access Board.
Earlier, Mr. Gattis served as Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation project investigating the use of an expert system for prescription of assistive technology. Based on this work, Mr. Gattis designed, implemented, and supported a database application for post-secondary schools called AbleAide, which has been used by over 250 colleges and universities in Canada and the U.S.
Mr. Gattis also served as Principal Investigator on the US Department of Education Phase I and II SBIR project "Talking Menus." This project investigated methods for providing restaurant menu information aurally to individual who are blind. The system featured an easy-to-use interface that allowed the user to peruse the menu in much the same way as a sighted user.
