!!musiC@!!!musiC@!
-I was born with congenital glaucoma.
I lost my vision when I was 21 due to some complications
that came about because of eye surgery.
Technology really has impacted my life
in almost every way you could possibly imagine.
I have an app on my phone that I can point up to my shirt,
and it will tell me the color of my shirt.
Told me this one's red where it's actually blue,
so it doesn't work that great sometimes.
I have an app that will help me count money.
I have a talking GPS app that can help me if I ever get lost.
So technology really has permeated every part of my life.
I would say that the biggest barrier that I've encountered
was dealing with inaccessible technology.
-There's just a great abundance
of educational technologies out there,
but if they're not accessible,
then they make education more difficult
for those people using assistive technologies.
-It was such an advantage to all the other students in the class,
but for me, inaccessible technologies
just created this barrier
that there really was no way for me to overcome.
-Students with disabilities today
face challenges that I don't think
that their peers and faculty fully appreciate.
-They have to allocate time
to learning how to use their technologies.
And then, if the courses they take
are not designed to be accessible,
that increases the study time for them exponentially.
They're spending more time studying.
They're working harder behind the scenes.
-Students with disabilities have the same goals as anybody else.
They want to graduate. They want to get a job.
They want to contribute to society.
You need to make sure, with a student with a disability,
that they have the right tools in place
so that they're getting the same information that their peers are
in the same time frame.
-A couple of years ago at Blackboard,
we made a pretty profound shift
in how we think about developing our products and services.
And we did so
by putting the learner at the center of all that we do
and know that, with our customers,
we share a joint mission,
which is to help learners be successful.
-Most people think of accessibility as a product,
but it's so much more than that.
-For Blackboard, it's important for us to make sure
that our software meets not only the industry guidelines,
but creates a great experience for these students
as they move along their academic journey.
-They no longer want to retrofit accessibility.
They are now considering accessibility
earlier on in the design process,
and you can see that
in the products that are coming out of Blackboard now.
-Blackboard Collaborate is an interactive and immersive tool
that allows people to communicate in real time.
-It's essentially the idea of having a virtual classroom
that anybody can go into.
A lot of those activities that you usually will find
in face-to-face classroom situations
are able to be performed online using this platform.
-Inclusive classrooms
really make the learning experience welcoming
for all students.
So students can come in with confidence,
knowing that that environment has been designed
to meet the needs of all learners.
So, right off the bat, it's more user-friendly,
and it allows everyone to have a seat at the table.
And I think that's so important,
because then you get more diverse discussions --
you get more diverse perspectives.
-One of the last classes that I took before graduation --
one of the few times, as a student,
where I was actually able to take the same exam
at the same time
in the same room as everybody else.
And that's a pretty powerful experience,
when, you know, I had spent four years prior to that
always having to go to Disability Services for exams
or requesting special formats of exams or of textbooks.
-The Collaborate team
take accessibility very, very seriously.
They work with the teachers and the students
to understand how they're using the tool
to make sure that the product
is going to be accessible for everybody.
-I'm really excited about all of the interaction
that we see with Blackboard around accessibility.
They're very engaged.
And any time we do find issues and report to them,
they take action.
-The users should have input on the design.
We're the ones that are working with it out in the field,
and we understand that teaching and learning environment.
So it's really great
when we can share that perspective with the developers
and help them create born accessible products
and products that we know are gonna be successful.
That responsiveness to the end users
really sets Collaborate apart.
-We're absolutely not gonna sit still
when it relates to accessibility.
The stakes are too high,
and it's too important for the future.
We believe that we've set the bar
with the Collaborate: Ultra experience,
and we're gonna continue to move that bar up,
and we're gonna continue to make all of our products reach
to those very, very high standards that schools expect
and that students deserve in their learning experiences.
-They really are pioneers in terms of accessibility.
!!musiC@!!!musiC@!