Lightening Talk
Melissa Helquist
Associate Professor, English, Salt Lake Community
College PhD Candidate—Texas Tech University
Biography
Melissa Helquist is Associate Professor of English at Salt Lake Community College and a PhD Candidate at Texas Tech University. Her dissertation research focuses on digital literacy, disability, and sound.
Abstract
Learning in higher ed is increasingly being individualized and decentralized, often through the use of online tools. Unfortunately, many of these web-‐based materials and course delivery systems are not accessible. One possible way to address this problem is through crowdsourcing accessibility, inviting members of the campus community to improve accessibility through adding captions, image descriptions, and other features to multimedia content. Crowdsourcing invites broad participation, moving accessibility away from the concern of a few to the many.
The crowdsourcing model is being explored through cooperations between Amara, an open source captioning platform, and MOOC providers like Coursera and Udacity. This presentation will describe an effort to apply this crowdsourcing model to the local context of an urban community college. Crowdsourcing accessibility has the dual benefit of providing more accessible content, but also of providing learning opportunities for students in a range of courses such as computer science and communication. Not only will participating students learn about the technical basics of accessibility, but they will also gain insights into equality, access, and social justice in a digital age.