Kenneth Jernigan Award Presentation

Presented by Curtis Chong

Curtis Chong: Good evening, my fellow Federationists. I’m trying not to pop my Ps here. Tonight, I am both honored and humbled to be able to present the Kenneth Jernigan Award. When in the late 80s and early 90s blind people were able to use the text-based, keyboard-driven, disk-operating system DOS to work successfully, a lot of us thought that our lives with respect to computers couldn’t get any better. When in the early 90s we heard about Microsoft taking the world by storm with Windows and its graphical icons instead of text and the mouse in place of keyboard commands, those of us who used a keyboard and text-based interfaces had no idea how we would make it in this new graphical world.

Fortunately for us, several companies decided to build and sell screen readers for Windows. One such company, Henter-Joyce, already had a screen reader for DOS called JAWS for DOS. Recognizing the need to move to the Windows world, they hired a blind graduate from UCLA with a master’s in business administration, a blind person with the lived experience of a blind person needing to make productive use of a computer. For the last three decades, our award recipient has been the primary architect behind the innovation JAWS for Windows that has kept many of us employed and ensured that hundreds of thousands of blind people around the world could gain efficient access to email, word processing, may I say it, the World Wide Web, and other applications used in employment and daily life. He is also unparalleled in his ability to understand the technical intricacies that enable screen readers to obtain information from the systems and applications that we, the blind, must be able to use to compete with our sighted peers on a true basis of equality. Anyone who has ever worked on nonvisual access for Windows and Windows programs is well aware that our ability to use systems and programs that are originally designed for people who can see the screen rests on a delicate and cooperative exchange of information between screen reading software, the operating system, and the programs that actually accomplish the work we need to have done. Our award recipient understands this delicate exchange of information better than most people I know. It is my privilege therefore to introduce Glen Gordon. [Applause] Glen, can you make your way up here?

I first became aware of Glen Gordon when he spoke at a Microsoft Accessibility Summit held way back in 1995. What impressed me then was his deep understanding of the cooperative connections that must exist between applications and systems designed for the sighted and screen readers used by the blind. I was also impressed by Glen’s ability to speak the language that the nerds at Microsoft used and understand. [Laughter] As evidenced by Freedom Scientific’s FSCast podcast, which Glen hosted for a few years, Glen is exceptionally articulate and easy for us mortal human beings to understand. Glen has spent three decades, you heard him talk today, ensuring that blind people can live and work using computers and systems designed primarily for people who can see. We celebrate not just one man’s work but the ripple effect of his accomplishment in changed lives and expanded opportunities. Yes, indeed. I’m not using a refreshable Braille display. I’m using real paper. [Applause]

Glen, it is both to honor you and to convey our heartfelt appreciation for who you are and what you have done that we present you with the Kenneth Jernigan Award, give you this plaque, and invite you to the microphone. [Applause] It’s in print and in Braille.
And I’m going to read it first before you get your shot at this, okay?

So it has the NFB logo and says: “Kenneth Jernigan Award. For your dedication to the highest ideals, for your commitment to blind-centered innovation, for your leadership in expanding access to information, we, the organized blind movement, confer upon Glen Gordon the Kenneth Jernigan Award. [Applause] You were ready for every challenge, your commitment to accessibility excellence is unmatched, you are a friend to the blind the world over. National Federation of the Blind, July 13, 2025.” [Applause]

Glen Gordon: Thank you, Curtis. I think this was bait and switch. [Laughter] I was just told I was coming to do a presentation. And in fact, I’m not ready for a challenge—the challenge of actually feeling like I’m worth accepting this award. [Applause] It seems like only yesterday that I was attending a meeting where Jim Thatcher and Rich and some of the early screen reading pioneers were speaking, and I was this young kid, you know, trying to ask intelligent questions.

And now it’s thirty years later. Where has the time gone? And I just, you know, sort of fixed bug after bug [Laughter] and helped move things forward. But this came as a complete surprise. Ryan and others managed to hide it well. I should have suspected when my colleague Karl Wise, who I have worked with for thirty years, suddenly appeared this afternoon. [Laughter] But I thought Ryan was just bringing him to have a reunion with me. So this comes as a complete surprise and a tremendous honor. Thank you very much.