Introduction
The WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) and the DIAGRAM Center have partnered with WGBH’s PEEP and the Big Wide World to create Accessible Peep. Utilizing digital learning assets from WGBH’s PEEP and the Big Wide World website, Accessible Peep offers
- accessible videos and games for students
- how-to guides for adding accommodations to digital resources
- teacher resources for inclusive teaching
- a research methodology for testing the effect of accommodations on student engagement
History and Future Goals
For decades, NCAM has researched effective practices for creating accessible digital assets including video, games, and documents. As digital learning materials increasingly include accommodations such as captions, descriptions, and keyboard-only access, it is natural to ask if some accommodations might be helpful for a wider range of students?
In the future, we hope to use materials like these and the Accessible Peep research methodology to research a broad range of interesting questions such as whether students on the Autism spectrum or who have ADHD benefit from video descriptions, if English Learners benefit from English captions, or which students might benefit from playing games with the keyboard as opposed to using a mouse.
Acknowledgments
Accessible Peep is a collaboration between NCAM, DIAGRAM Center, PEEP and the Big Wide World, MAD*POW, and the U.S. Department of Education.
The DIAGRAM Center is a Benetech initiative supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (Cooperative Agreement #H327B150001). Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S. Department of Education.
We want to hear from you!
Accessible Peep’s videos and games are universally designed with their accommodations available to everyone. Please use them with students of all abilities and learning styles and use the how-to guides to create your own accessible learning materials. Please let us know how it goes by sending us an email.
