Preparing Educators for the Future of Accessible Education Materials
Page 2 A Moment of Opportunity Common Core Standards: new curriculum & assessments, increased similarity across states + Ebooks: now born digital, new commercial publications standard (EPUB 3)
Page 3 Challenge: Many, Many Content Creators 5 Assessment Consortia 46 Common Core States 83 Edtech venture capital deals in first half 2012* 300 million Potential authors & publishers in the US *Source: CB Insights:
Page 4 A Critical Strategy All materials Born Digital Must be Born Accessible
Page 5 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.
Page 6 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
Page 7 Content Tools Discovery Services Born Accessible 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
Page 8 Bookshare
Page 9 What is Accessible Content? ● Text ● Formatting ● Navigation ● Pictures ● Math
Page 10 Web Reader
Page 11 Guiding Question #2 ● What are the tools available to educators to support the development of accessible materials, including STEMx materials.
Page 12 Accessible EPUB 3 Guidelines: Text Reflowable Style/Content Formatting Tables & Lists Headers Ordering Video Track: subtitles, description, etc. Math MathML Description Images Longdesc DIAGRAM Content Model Structure Navigation Sections Accessible STEM Content Highlights
Page 13 Images are Challenging (especially STEM)
Page 14 ● 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?
Page 15 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
Page 16 POET Image Description Tool
Page 17 Poet: Navigate, Contextualize, Describe
Page 18 ● Descriptions and tactile output Math Tools: Web-based MathTrax
Page 19 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)
Page 20 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…
Page 21 WE CAN’T DO How can we work together to better serve students in this Moment of Opportunity? Web/Twitter/etc. Working Groups Volunteer