Accessibility Innovations and Emerging Technologies Research Lab

If you want to visit the lab or if you are looking for help with accessiblising a course, please .

The Accessibililty Innovations and Emerging Technologies Research Lab is focussed on generating and creating known strategies and novel innovations to help with making courses and other learning experiences accessible to all students, including students with disabilities. We are starting out with low-vision/blind students because that is how these projects (and Lab) started, and that is what we get most of our requests for. The Lab is currently physically located in DIF 102 on the main FSU campus.

1. Accessible Design and Pedagogy: From principles of backward design, we know to start at the "end," that is, with the goals of your course. Then we think about assessments to determine what constitutes evidence that your students have reached the goals, and finally think about and design activities that support learning towards that goal. This is a well-known iterative process but typically, faculty are not asked to think about accessibility. Are your Goals accessible and achievable for everyone? Do your assessments and activities work for everyone? We start the process out with the UDL framework as the foundation instead of thinking about it "when I have to."

2. Accessible Resources and Materials: This alludes to actual content matter — physical, tactile, digital. We take the UDL approach where we generate resources that can be translated to multiple outputs — pdf, html, braille, high contrast, etc. For example, for math and math-heavy courses, we write/code once in PreTeXt/PreFigure XML formats, and then output to any required format, including braille. We will (attempt to) create and generate 3D prints with braille, produce material for AR/VR glasses for audio immersion and descriptions, or for AI and AI wearables for interpreting information devoid of alternate forms that can be used by blind students.

3. Accessible Instruction and Student Experience: Once your course is properly designed and you have all the necessary materials, the implementation is equally important. We support faculty in evidence-inspired instructional practices for all students, as in, what not to say to students, how do deal with multimodality, using microphones (the "I don't need a mic" myth persists!), facilitating group work among diverse students, etc.

• MGF 1130 Mathematical Thinking
• MGF 1140 Pre-calculus
• CHM 1045 Gen Chem I — partial support for now, 3D molecules only; notes coming soon
• New course (Spring 2026) "ArtScience" from Interdisciplinary Studies
• More math courses in the works.

We try to make it easy for the faculty — if faculty want to learn how to do the above, we will happily train them and/or anyone on their team.

Some pictures of students presenting their work as a poster at the Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 03, 2026 are below.

Here is the PowerPoint slide deck that I used at the invited, featured workshop at the CoTL 2026 Conference.

At AI+ET Research Lab, we also focus on newer technologies like AR/VR, AI, and their integration to find new, innovative solutions to existing issues. Although not all of these technologies are new, their combinations allow us to look for optimal solutions which these tech by themselves may not be able to achieve. Below are a few of our ideas.

• We are currently testing the Meta AI glasses with our blind and deaf students. The use cases here are plenty: way-finding (crowdsourced, mapped using Unity/XR), audible and haptic interpretations of signage or written music for the blind, subtitles of spoken announcements for the deaf, AI-assisted quality-of-life improvements, entire movies, documentaries, planetarium shows interpreted (for the blind, deaf, neurodivergent, dyslexic, ...), and more.

• Science experiments, engineering design and testing, etc. Several research and engineering labs around the US and the world are doing a great job making their labs accessible, including to blind students. This is beyond our capability as of now, but it is something we will persue when the time is right.

• Safety. Independence. If a blind student or a person in a wheelchair needs help, how can we use context-aware technology to best assist them?

• Study guide and coach with subject-level knowledge. E.g., explain a concept on a non-accessible page, allow for learning through "play" (for example, connect different "balls" (atoms) to different "sticks" (bonds): does this molecule exist or make sense? Why or why not?) Help with note-taking, or improving notes delivered to students so that note-taking becomes a non-issue.

We have been approached by some other non-academic projects as well, for example, identifying issues (and suggesting/implementing solutions) at the Tallahassee Challenger Learning Center. There are more (a museum!), but we don't want to be spread too thin just yet.

Research Assistants:

• Bailey Thomas (reads/types braille, uses tactile materials, enjoys technology, has a seeing-eye dog named Sirius, past Learning Assistant) (2024-26)
• Savannah Lindberg (reads/types braille, uses tactile materials, enjoys technology, uses a cane, past student and current LA) (2025-26)

UROP Researchers:

• 2025-26: Alenisse Adorno-Roman, Benjamin Campos, Dominic Denardis, Lupe Figueroa, Sophia Ocfemia, Natalie Velazquez

Independent Researchers:

• 2025-26: Gracie Jean-Charles, Janiyah Outlaw