Accessible Technology & Design Impacts All Learners – VSF Technology and the Power of Innovation for Access (EP.23)

Accessible Technology and Design Impacts All Learners - VSF
Technology and the Power of Innovation for Access (EP.23) With
Randal Walker, M.D. "When the wall of exclusion came down,
everybody benefited" - Angela Glover Blackwell Have you heard of
the "curb-cut effect"?  It is a phenomenon when a technology
or innovation comes along meant to benefit one situation or
demographic and ends up being used in unplanned ways by just about
everyone who has access. Many technologies we rely on today have
come about from assistive devices that were originally designed as
accommodations for disabilities, e.g. keyboards and closed
captions. When we design learning and technology with inclusion and
access in mind, the outcomes is often that almost everyone
benefits.  Pioneering and award winning physician with Mayo
Clinic Division of Infectious Disease & Assistant Professor of
Medicine, Emeritus, Randal Walker, M.D. joins Stacy Craft to share
his story and journey innovating new assistive technologies for low
vision readers. His creation, Visual Syntactic Text Formatting, has
become an illuminating case study in the unexpected and meaningful
ways assistive tools and technologies can benefit everyone.
Questions? Feedback? Ideas? Contact us at edufi@mayo.edu Additional
Resources: Videos: Improving Reading Performance with Syntactic
Formatting Technology The Curb Cut effect - When Accessibility
benefits everyone Articles: Blackwell, A. G. (2016). The Curb-Cut
Effect. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 15(1), 28–33.
https://doi.org/10.48558/YVMS-CC96 Walker, S., Schloss, P.,
Fletcher, C. R., Vogel, C. A., & Walker, R. C.
(2005). Visual-syntactic text formatting: A new method to
enhance online reading. Reading Online, 8(6).