Personalized Access to NSDL

Wgbh Educational Foundation, Brighton MA

Investigators

Abstract

The WGBH National Center for Accessible Media is embedding the capacity to transform and customize presentation of NSDL resources based on individual user profiles. The project focuses on making middle school resources more accessible to support students with disabilities during the critical transition in STEM learning that occurs in the middle school years. The Integrated Service offered by this initiative builds on collaborative work embodied in the custom NSDL Access For All portal standard which enables digital delivery systems to match a user's specific accessibility needs to the characteristics of a resource. The service benefits any collection that provides Access For All metadata to the NSDL Data Repository and thereby greatly extends the usefulness of NSDL by enabling students and teachers with disabilities to independently access and benefit from NSDL resources. This system-wide application enables the use of universal design features for all NSDL resource collections for diverse learners. The schema is documented for use by all collections. Training sessions support catalogers in evaluating accessibility of existing resources and in making new resources accessible as they are added to the data repository. External evaluation is concurrently documenting the effectiveness of project activities and outcomes on partner collections. Evaluation includes assessing the impact on NSDL, other digital repositories and on educators and organizations supporting learners with disabilities. A publicly documented metadata schema, recorded in the NSDL community, ensures that new collections can add Access for All metadata at any time and is automatically promoted in the NSDL Access For All portal.