On Wednesday, February 5, Digital Accessibility Services participated in the Education Living-Learning Community campus accessibility showcase, hosted by Ball State Residence Life. This was an event for students to engage with the different resources on campus and in Teachers College to make learning more accessible. 

Alongside the Student Council for Exceptional Children, Dr. Penny Craig from the TEACH lab, and Dixie Denton representing Teachers College, students explore various forms of digital accessibility. They had the opportunity to create and decorate Braille or raised-line door tags using the same tools that make subjects like math, chemistry, finance, and even art accessible for non-visual and tactile learners. This also reinforced the idea that students with disabilities exist in every discipline from freshman to doctorate.

“We are empowering students to believe that learning, or choosing specific majors like STEM, is not prevented by disability, especially in an age with so many tools from low-tech to high-tech. We have students with disabilities on campus from freshman to PhD, across all disciplines,” Nick Baumgartner, Manager of Digital Accessibility Services said. “Our hope is to educate future teachers that STEM or other high-level content can be accessible to more students than they may have originally thought, and to be creative in how teachers are presenting information, considering diverse learning styles to create content that all students can access. All students, regardless of disability, can be given an equal opportunity to succeed in college with the right supports.”   

Throughout the event, the Tech Center distributed about 30 information cards. This event emphasized that Ball State is one step closer to showing that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed in college.