Gaeir Dietrich, Director, California Community Colleges
Disability Area: Topic Area:
Length of Session (in hours): 1-hr
Format: Lecture
Expertise Level: All Levels
Type of session: Not provided
Summary of Session
DSS offices, educators, and assistive technology specialists need tools and standards for creating accessible educational materials in the tricky areas of STEM content and images. Learn what new and improved tools you can use to bring accessible images and math to students with print disabilities.
Abstract
With the advancement of the new EPUB 3 format in digital publishing and the explosion of funding for “ed tech,” new opportunities are emerging to allow accessibility to be built into the creation of educational materials from the start, making them cheaper, easier and faster to produce. What new resources are available to educational content creators and assistive technology specialists? This session will cover new initiatives that fill existing gaps in delivering accessible math and image content to students in a timely manner. Learn about resources you can use today that will provide many options for creating accessible versions of digital images such as maps, bar charts, diagrams, mathematical expressions, photographs, and more. Information on emerging research & development on interactive images will also be included in this session.
Kepoints
Latest tools for training staff to create image descriptions in digital content, including case studies.
Concrete examples of accessible image formats and alternative options that cater to end-user needs.
New R&D in accessible STEM content creation, including accessible interactive widgets.
Speaker Bio(s)
Sue-Ann Ma
Sue-Ann Ma is a Product Manager at the DIAGRAM Center, a Benetech Global Literacy Initiative funded by the US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. Since joining Benetech, Sue-Ann has been involved in a variety of collaborative projects geared towards setting standards and providing tools to make digital content and images accessible, particularly in the area of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). This includes authoring tools for images and mathematical equations, specifications for accessibility metadata, and training resources for creating image descriptions. Prior to joining Benetech, she spent several years as a Project Manager implementing sourcing systems for corporate retail in Asia and as a Product Manager for a US-based foreign language publishing house. Sue-Ann attained her B.A. from Berkeley and M.A. from Harvard.
Gaeir Dietrich
Gaeir Dietrich is the director of the High Tech Center Training Unit (HTCTU) of the California community colleges, located at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. She is a member of the AHEAD Board and serves on the advisory boards for Bookshare, the Alternate Text Production Center (ATPC), and the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center (SVILC). She also leads the Veterans Resource Center (VRC) project for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. In 2010-2011, she served as the chair for the national Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in Post-secondary Education.