Here’s the info for our April Accessibility Interest Group meeting. Years ago, we had Louis Shanafelt come and speak to us about Equatio. We thought it would be cool to have him come back and update us on new things.
Session Time:
Thursday, April 3, 2025, 11 am to 12 PM ET
Session Title: Equatio as Part of a Digital First Strategy
Speaker: Louis is the Equatio Senior Product Manager for Everway which is an industry leader in literacy and STEM software. He holds the Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) credential from IAAP which represents broad, cross-disciplinary conceptual knowledge about disabilities; accessibility and universal design; and accessibility-related standards, laws, and management strategies. In over 5 years at Everway, he has served as the liaison between our marketing team, sales staff, development team, and our customers which help drive our Equatio product roadmap. Prior to this role, he spent 20 years working in a large urban district as a teacher & district administrator. His teaching experience began at the elementary level & eventually he transitioned to secondary mathematics. He has also delivered countless hours of professional development to thousands of teachers on instructional best practices using technology. He finished his education career as an instructional designer building online learning modules for teachers in the district for which he worked.
Session Summary:
Times like these call for new and different measures, especially for students that struggle. While these changes won’t occur overnight, there are steps that all educators can begin taking now, in addition to many supports that can make teaching in a blended learning environment much easier.For starters, instructors & institutions must adopt a digital first strategy when it comes to instructional materials. Creating digital content is important. It is much more likely to be accessible than its paper based equivalent. Moving towards digital materials means being inclusive of all learners, giving them multiple ways to understand concepts and express their learning. It’s no secret that due to the complexity of math symbols, the plethora of worksheets in circulation, and the requirement for students to “show their work,” it has been difficult, if not impossible to create a digital equivalent. Until now…
Equatio is Everway's Math/STEM tool that helps to level the math playing field for students, educators, and disabilities services departments by making it easy to create math that is both digital and accessible. It provides simple, easy access to nearly all forms of existing math. In addition to reading math aloud, users can also use Equatio to easily convert inaccessible print or digital math documents into their accessible equivalent to be used with many existing Assistive Technologies.
Hope to see you there!