preparing educators for the future of accessible education materials
TRANSCRIPT
Preparing Educators for the Future of Accessible Education Materials
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A Moment of Opportunity
Common Core Standards: new curriculum & assessments, increased similarity across states
+
Ebooks: now born digital, new commercial publications standard (EPUB 3)
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Challenge: Many, Many Content Creators
5 Assessment Consortia
46Common Core States
83Edtech venture capital deals in first half 2012*
300 millionPotential authors & publishers in the US
*Source: CB Insights: http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/size-ed-tech-market-venture-capital
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A Critical Strategy
All materials
Born Digital
Must be
Born Accessible
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Guiding Questions
● Why is it important for educators to understand how content is created?
● What are the tools available to educators to support the development of accessible materials, including STEMx materials.
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Guiding question #1
● Why is it important for educators to understand how content is created (and made accessible)?
● Because educators must:
– Buy/use accessible content
– Buy/use accessible tools that work with content
– Create accessible content
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• Content Tools• Discovery• Services
BornAccessibl
e
DIAGRAM: R&D• Tools for accessible image creation• Technical standards• Research, training and best practice
guidelines
Reading Tools & Training• Cloud-based bookshelf• MP3 download• Web Reader• Professional dev workshops
Bookshare Service• Accessible online library• Scale, efficiency• Getting books into students’ hands
Benetech Education Initiatives
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Bookshare
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What is Accessible Content?
● Text● Formatting● Navigation● Pictures● Math
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Web Reader
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Guiding Question #2
● What are the tools available to educators to support the development of accessible materials, including STEMx materials.
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Accessible EPUB 3 Guidelines: http://idpf.org/accessibility/guidelines/nav.php
TextReflowableStyle/ContentFormatting
Tables & ListsHeadersOrdering
VideoTrack: subtitles, description, etc.
MathMathMLDescription
ImagesLongdescDIAGRAM Content Model
StructureNavigationSections
Accessible STEM Content Highlights
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Images are Challenging (especially STEM)
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● Provides different mode of access to visual information contained in an image, e.g.:– Text/audio description
– Tactile graphic
– Sonification
– Smart image
– Multi-modal access
What is an Accessible Image?
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About this description
Author: John Doe, Ph.D. in Water Engineering
Target Age: 9-12
Target Grade: 4-7
Summary
The image depicts the cycle of water evaporating, turning into clouds, falling back to earth in the form of precipitation and being filtered through sediment.
Long Description
The image depicts the natural process of evaporation and precipitation and how rain water gets filtered and cleansed through the earth's sediment.
On the left-hand side of the image is a lake...
A weather event such as a rainstorm eventually returns the precipitation to the ground...
The natural filtering agents in the soil...
Annotation added by teacher
In the winter we get snow instead of rain.
Simplified Language Description
The image shows how water becomes clouds, then rain, and then gets cleaned by the soil.
Tactile Image
[Tactile image]
In the upper left corner of the tactile…
Simplified Image
[Simplified image]
Moving front the top left corner of the image
Accessible Image Example
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POET Image Description Tool
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Poet: Navigate, Contextualize, Describe
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● Descriptions and tactile output
Math Tools: Web-based MathTrax
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How to Get There: Strategic Partnerships
A sampling of our hundreds of partners:● AIR, USFDAISY, NCAM● Don Johnston, Humanware, Learning Ally, NLS,
NIMAC● MeTRC, VDRDC● NFB, NCLD, PACER, CAST, Internet Archive● Google, Barnes & Noble, Moodle Rooms● 200 publishers● DIAGRAM Advisory Board: 27 members, 20+
working group members● Bookshare Advisory Board: 17 members (pending
approval)
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Looking Ahead: Challenges
● Interactive content● Social reading & learning● Accessibility in assessments● Research on effectiveness of new
approaches● Full federated search implementation across
all image repositories● Universal identifiers for images…
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WE CAN’T DOHTTPS://WWOOKSHARE.ORG/_/
How can we work together to better serve students in this Moment of Opportunity?
Web/Twitter/etc.Working Groups
Volunteer
www.Bookshare.orgwww.Diagramcenter.org
www.Bookshare.org/_/volunteer/overview