As an individual with disabilities and researcher in assistive technology, I am thrilled to discover any way that online learning environments can be made more accessible to students with disabilities.

Bloomsberg University in Pennsylvania has integrated real-time sign language captioning into an online course to increase access for students who are deaf and hard of hearing — very cool! The course used the Wimba learning platform.

A grant funded this project, so I am guessing this captioning does not come cheap. It would be interesting to compare the cost of captioning an online course to providing interpreters in face-to-face classes. In any case, I hope this is just the beginning of endeavors to increase online learning acessbility.

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