Building an Accessible Future for the Humanities Project

The Building an Accessible Future for the Humanities Project is organizing five 2-day workshops during which participants will learn about technologies, design standards, and accessibility issues associated with the use of digital environments. (See workshop Agenda for details.)

Who should apply?

• Humanists,
• Librarians,
• Information scientists, and
• Cultural heritage professionals.

Interested parties should apply to the workshop with the date and location that works best for them.

Limited funding will be available to offset the cost of attending the institute workshops, thanks to support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This funding will be awarded based on need. Subvention of travel and lodging costs will be handled via reimbursement.

Partners

This important project is a partnership with the BrailleSC.org project, the Northeastern University Center for Digital Humanities, the Emory University Libraries Digital Commons (DiSC), the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) at the University of Nebraska (UNL), the College of Information at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), the Center for Digital Humanities at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

While scholars who offer courses have been able to turn to their University-level instructional technologies staff for accessibility, scholars who are designing, building, and implementing digital products outside of the classroom (as most humanities-research projects do) have been unable to get the help or guidance that they need. These types of research and the issues of accessibility that they raise with are not the same accessibility issues usually addressed by disability support services offices on university campuses. These campus resources generally concentrate on students and their engagement with course materials (exams and textbooks) or the physical environment (assistive devices). As a result, humanists, librarians, and others looking for assistance in building, designing, and implementing digital projects for assisted users have been largely ignored. Accessible Future will engage those working in digital humanities, information studies, librarianship, and cultural heritage work with resources, training, and a community of people that can assist them with accessibility issues in their own research, training, and teaching.

Accessible Future is led by Assistant Director Jennifer Guiliano (IUPUI), George Williams and Tina Herzberg (BrailleSC.org), with assistance from workshop hosts Elizabeth Dillon and Ryan Cordell (Northeastern), Tanya Clement (UT), Kay Walter (UNL), Stewart Varner and Brian Croxall (Emory), Annelie Rugg, Anthony Caldwell, and Lisa Snyder (UCLA). The team is assisted by: Jeremy Boggs (University of Virginia Scholar’s Lab), James Smith (Independent Developer), Cory Bohon (Independent Developer), Clay Jeffcoat (Access Technology Coordinator for the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind), and Marty R. McKenzie (Principal of the Division of Outreach Services for the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind).

IUPUI would like to recognize the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and its Office of Digital Humanities for its support. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed on the website or in presentation materials do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.