Leadership and Accessible Technology

Catalog description

This course equips students with tools for understanding principles and uses of accessible technologies, such as captioned media, mobile applications, and voice recognition software, with a focus on how deaf and hard-of-hearing leaders and organizations work to ensure access to communication. This course is built on the framework of access as a continual process in which users advocate for the needs of their community. This course establishes the legal requirements that mandate access technologies, such as captioned media, and reviews how leaders have campaigned for increased access to media. These underlying principles inform the course’s overriding exploration of the benefits and limitations of current technologies that may not be fully accessible; how current leaders and leading organizations utilize access technologies to facilitate signed, spoken, and written communication; and current work on the next generation of access technologies. The readings, assignments, and discussions in this course will encourage students to recognize how access technologies can support individuals as well as how leaders can serve as advocates who work to fight for improved access to communication and other resources in their communities.