Rate My Professor Brian Trager

Brian Trager serves as Department Chair of the Department of Information and Computing Studies at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). An Information Technology faculty member with a specialization in access technology, he holds BS and MS degrees from RIT. Trager previously worked as Associate Director of the NTID Center on Access Technology and as an associate professor. His career emphasizes information technology education and technological solutions for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, including leadership in the DeafTEC cybersecurity bootcamp funded by the National Science Foundation.

Trager's research contributions focus on assistive technologies for educational accessibility. Key publications include 'Exploration of Automatic Speech Recognition for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in Higher Education Classes' (co-authored with Janine Butler and Byron Behm, ASSETS '19, 2019), 'Relying on Sight as the Primary Sense: Employing Deaf Students in STEM and Design Fields' (2019), 'American Sign Language: Maximum Live Replay Speed' (2013), 'Assistive View Replay for Deaf Students' (co-authored with Raja Kushalnagar and Karen Beiter, RESNA Annual Conference, 2012), and 'Improving Classroom Visual Accessibility with Cooperative Smartphone Recordings' (2011). He co-developed the 'MAG: De'VIA' mobile app (Center on Access Technology, 2019) and the MUSEAI app for self-guided museum tours with enhanced accessibility features. Trager is also a co-inventor on U.S. Patent 10,927,132 (February 23, 2021) for a 'Method and System to Enhance Communication Between Multiple Parties.' In recognition of his teaching, he received the NTID Teaching/Tutoring Award for Tenured Faculty in the 2013-2014 academic year, noted for outstanding student evaluations and personal connections with students. He teaches courses including NACT-150: Intro to PC Hardware and NACT-151: Windows Operating Systems, and has collaborated on projects such as Microsoft partnerships for AI-powered live captioning.