Robert Martinengo

Robert Martinengo has over twenty years’ experience in accessible publishing for education. In the 1990’s as a Studio Director for Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), he saw how the unmet demand for accessible textbooks was rapidly spilling over to publishers. In 1999 California enacted AB422, its pioneering “etext law”, and Robert set up the first large-scale publisher file request system for the Alternate Text Production Center of the California Community Colleges (ATPC). This system became the model for the AccessText Network (ATN), launched by the Association of American Publishers in 2009 to streamline the file requests process for publishers and post-secondary institutions. Robert managed the growth of the ATN from the initial eight publishers to over thirty, and from several hundred college members to several thousand. In 2019 Robert founded the Consumer Accessibility Information Label Association (CAILA) to further establish accessible publishing in the mainstream.