The Riverside Art Museum (RAM) created KickstART kits during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide natural science education through at-home art making. Each kit is designed to inspire young learners to explore the natural world, and each kit has five art lessons with specific themes students can choose from: Animals, Art Around the World, Oceans of Fun, Desert, and Winter.
Open Exhibits, originally funded by the National Science Foundation, seeks to transform the way in which museums and other informal learning institutions produce and share digital exhibits. Open Exhibits hosts accessible downloadable exhibits that utilize universal design principles in their development. Examples of downloadable exhibits include the following:
The California Academy of Sciences has an aquarium, planetarium, rainforest, and natural history museum and is a powerful voice for biodiversity research and exploration, environmental education, and sustainability across the globe. One of their core values is a commitment to diversity and equity. Outlined on their website their commitment reads:
Recognizing the value of learning computer science (CS) for all students, many nationwide efforts are underway to ensure that all students in K-12 schools are introduced to computer science. Unfortunately, many of these efforts do not promote practices that are fully accessible and inclusive of students with disabilities. Three examples of inclusive efforts are listed below.
Throughout 2020, as conferences moved online in response to the global pandemic, many struggled with accessibility while others took proactive steps to make their conference more accessible. The 2020 Association of Computing Machinery International Computing Education Research Conference (ICER) is an example of one conference that chose to take proactive steps by captioning the sessions and providing clear guidelines to presenters about accessible presentations.
Alternative text, or “alt-text” is written descriptions of images that are embedded into website code and digital documents that can be read with screen readers by people with visual and other disabilities. An example of alt-text is “a small gray dog sitting on the grass in a park” that accompanies a photo of a dog.
Many conferences, both on-site and online, offer opportunities for researchers and practitioners to present their work. There are steps you can take to make your poster accessible to conference participants who have disabilities. The following tips apply to both on-site and online posters.
People of all ages, interests, and abilities use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms to share content and engage in conversations. Millions of social media participants have disabilities, including those that impact their ability to see, hear, and access a standard keyboard and mouse. Many use assistive technologies such as screen readers to read aloud content on the screen and alternate keyboards that emulate the computer keyboard but not the mouse.
The Intrepid Museum is an excellent example of an informal STEM learning program providing information about accessibility to the community. Through their Accessibility Resources website, information is structured into four categories: Online resources, on-site resources, specialized programs, and the Community Advisors program.