Barbara Gruber & Ashley Grady: Supporting Accessibility and Inclusion at the Smithsonian Institution

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Barbara Gruber and Ashley Grady! Barb is the Assistant Director for Education for the National Air & Space Museum, and Ashley is the Senior Program Manager for Access Smithsonian (access.si.edu), the accessibility office for all 21 Smithsonian museums. Barb and Ashley discuss their work in the area of inclusion, the ways the Smithsonian is incorporating feedback from the disability community, free leveled teacher resources from the National Air & Space Museum, and more!

Before the interview, Chris and Rachel finish up chatting about Chris’s recent visit to the International Society of Technology and Education (ISTE) conference. Chris talks about Jordyn Zimmerman’s presentation with Apple, shares the only AAC-focused vendor at ISTE 2023, and challenges everyone to learn about new resources and ideas by attending conferences like ISTE and following Ed Tech specialists on social media.

Key Ideas This Week:

🔑 Twenty-one percent of people with disabilities have employment. This is an increase from 2008, but not enough - we need to continue to support more pathways to employment for people with disabilities!

🔑 Access Smithsonian brings in “user experts” who are members of different communities, including communities in the disability space, who are paid to share their feedback about current, and future, exhibits and learning materials.

🔑 The My Flight, My Space portal can be used to access content from the National Air & Space Museum that can be filtered and adjusted for things like reading level, length, and topics. This helps to make their digital experience more accessible and interesting to visitors. https://nasm.infiniteach.com/

🔑 The National Air & Space museum has a Learning Resource page for teachers that is aligned to standards and put into categories to search things like grade level and age. https://airandspace.si.edu/learn/learning-resources

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