BRAILLESC.ORG

FAIN: HD-51189-10

University of South Carolina Research Foundation (Columbia, SC 29208-0001)
George H. Williams (Project Director: March 2010 to August 2013)

The collection of additional oral histories, the preparation of pedagogical materials, and further development of additional accessibility features to a humanities website to allow for enhanced visitor experiences for visually-impaired users.

BrailleSC will combine participant expertise from the disciplines of English, education, and computer science to create a fully accessible, online scholarly resource concerning Braille literacy in South Carolina. The site will include oral histories from individuals about their experiences with Braille in everyday life; pedagogical materials to assist teachers in developing best practices in Braille instruction; and resources for families, stressing the importance of braille literacy and the methods of Braille instruction. Furthermore, the project is developing accessibility tools for Omeka and WordPress to overcome many of the web design problems that often frustrate visually impaired users. In partnership with the Center for Digital Humanities in Columbia, SC, and with guidance from the Center for History and New Media, we will model for the ways in which digital humanities projects can be designed and implemented with the needs of visually impaired users in mind.