What We Worked On

The AccessEd team met last week to:  (a) take stock where things stand in terms of background research and planned outputs for the project; and (b) discuss ways to best take advantage this week’s mid-semester review session to inform our work over the rest of the term.

What Went Well

The team continues to make progress on evaluating the landscape for online education and access and getting its collective arms around the scope of issues that learners with hearing and visual impairments face as course materials move online.   Conversations thus far with experts in this space have helped the team to understand key technical, policy, and resource concerns.

What Was Challenging

Identifying discrete tasks to be tackled within the scope and timeline of DPSI has been difficult.  Some of the technological challenges in this space are quite significant — e.g., challenges around development of fast and accurate captioning systems for audiovisual materials.  The team is perhaps more likely to have an impact as a resource (or aggregator of third-party resources) or perhaps codifier of best practices than as a technical engineering or development initiative.

What’s Up Next

The team looks forward to getting some feedback from the crowd at this week’s mid-semester review as we continue to develop our agenda for the coming weeks.