ITKAN’s mission is stoking the fires of passion and technology without limits for students and professionals with disabilities. The spectrum of disability ranges far and wide, and after an outstanding ITKAN monthly discussion about the creative possibilities of Microsoft’s X-Box Kinect gaming product, ideas and passion came together.
The new Visionary Innovation Team will explore current and emerging technologies that can impact the lives of people with vision loss and blindness, to improve their careers and lives as well as how society views and interacts with them.
Through the Team’s efforts to follow ITKAN’s mission of promoting the development of passionate technology leaders with disabilities, the Team ultimately wants to make a difference through analysis, discussions and solutions to the quandaries that they face.

Led by Kathie Topel, the founder of Impact Insights and author of POWERSHIP, along with Pat Maher, the managing director of nAblement, and Adam Hecktman, the director of Microsoft Technology Center Chicago, the members of ITKAN focused on its mission of passion, exploration and knowledge of technology in another vein.
Would you like to be a part of this engaging group and make a difference? Want to find out more about ITKAN and it’s members and supporters? Join us at our next meeting on May 17th at the Microsoft Technology Center and you’ll see that we have the setting, the people and the ideas to get the Chicago technology industry listening. (Email here to RSVP)
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Coming next week, ITKAN’s “Getting to Know” feature will focus on Dan TeVelde, an Associate Programmer (and ITKAN Visionary Team Member) at McDonald’s World Headquarters in Oakbrook, IL.