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One thing that emphasized with me was the fact that "digital is not synonymous with immaterial" (page 4). In fact, I would argue that digitizing something can make something more material, as it is preserved for a long time. For example, if I were to handout a study sheet to a class on paper, some students would misplace it within a few days (speaking from experience). However, if I were to direct students to an online platform like Canvas or Google Docs, they would have that same study sheet for as long as they needed--even years down the line.

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Something that I find problematic is the argument to not digitize the humanities to preserve exclusivity and/or access to information and education. I think that everyone should have access to information, education, and the humanities so that they can grow their knowledge on the human experience, thus gaining empathy and sympathy for others. Especially now, I feel that the world really needs to be educated on the human condition, the humanities in general, and the digital humanities, as empathy and sympathy is very low at the moment (I feel). Giving access to all through digital platforms allows for that knowledge to be spread easily. However, if humanities are to be fully digitized, teaching people what reliable sources are is a necessity. "Fake news" and false information is everywhere, so training people what valid research, scholarly sources, and reliable (secondary and primary) sources are is crucial. The good news is that teaching people about reliable research can also be done digitally, thus playing into the digital humanities concept.

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This article is good explaining how the humanities have and need to evolve--definitely will be using this in my thesis. I think I will create a whole new section on digital humanities and how they play into the classroom.

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Glasser and Micciche_Digitizing English (1)

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Exploring Writing Individually and Collaboratively Using Google Docs and EFL Contexts

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Exploring Writing Individually and Collaboratively Using Google Docs and EFL Contexts

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In this article, e-learning is combined with the traditional classroom, teaching the four language learning skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The findings from the study used found that this combination proves beneficial to students, positively impacting autonomous learning and student self-motivation. Blended learning combines the use of internet and online media/mediums with face-to-face classrooms with many “ingredients.” For example, a teacher might want to include the use of online discussions, blogs, chat rooms, or web boards within their class that is still meeting face-to-face. These online tools allow students to learn autonomously and still get the structure they need from in-person learning. Like Alsubaie and Ashuraidah’s article, “Exploring Writing Individually and Collaboratively Using Google Docs in EFL Contexts,” helps students take responsibility for their learning and making them more confident in the work they complete; e-learning allows educators to adopt a more student-centered idea of teaching/learning. When e-learning is blended in with the traditional classroom, introverted students get the chance to speak up without anxiety, diversification of activities is provided, and encourages the learning and enhancement of time management and study skills.

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Analysis of The Portal About the Great Detective

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Sherlockian.net is your curated directory for Sherlock Holmes! Our site welcomes newcomers, serves as a resource for Sherlockians, works to collect important resources for our community, and encourages participants to share in the .

This site is maintained by WIDE Research, a lab at Michigan State University directed by Liza Potts. We are caretakers of this website, a cultural landmark and an information portal for Sherlockians across the globe. Welcome!

Have new or updated content to share with us? Fill out our Contact Us form.

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Sherlockian.net is your curated directory for Sherlock Holmes! Our site welcomes newcomers, serves as a resource for Sherlockians, works to collect important resources for our community, and encourages participants to share in the Great Game. This site is maintained by WIDE Research, a lab at Michigan State University directed by Liza Potts.

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A Digital Humanities project is one which uses digital methods and computational techniques as part of its research methodology, dissemination plan, and/or public engagement. A typical Digital Huma…

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WHAT IS A DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECT?

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Another Padlet creation for a creative use of the Digital Humanities

Welcome - Sherlockian.net

1) Research Methods: Research was conducted via many outlets, including scholarly and non scholarly research. Furthermore, the creating of this DH project provides primary AND secondary research and products within their website portal. For example, this portal provides scholarly and peer reviewed sources about the character Sherlock Holmes, as well as some primary documents following Arthur Conan Doyle and his writings, including some letters he had written while writing about the popular character Sherlock Holmes. Research maintained a plethora and diversity when regarding resources and research; the portal provides interactive elements such as games, videos, and chat groups surrounding this popular mystery character. The research was conducted by mostly students, led by WIDE faculty, academic specialists, and graduate students.

2) The output or product that was created serves as a total to many different sources, games, videos, facts, and anything surrounding the character Sherlock Holmes. This is a website with a diverse set of pages, links, and graphics to lead the reader to interact with the page. One of my favorite things that this portal provided was an educator and teachings page, where lesson plans and activities could be used by a teacher for free in their lessons.

3) The audience for this DH project is broad, which I like. I am a Sherlock Holmes fan myself, so it was no surprise that fans like myself stumbled across the page and had interest in it. Besides fans of the most popular mystery detective character, educators and scholars share interest in the page too, as there are many academic scholarly sources and lessons/activities that can be used in the classroom.

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 COMBINING ONLINE LEARNING TOOLS WITH THE IN-PERSON CLASSROOM

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 COMBINING ONLINE LEARNING TOOLS WITH THE IN-PERSON CLASSROOM

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DH Project: Tech in the Classroom

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Lateral Reading in Self-contained (modern) literature: Anna Crigger

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Lateral Reading in Self-contained (modern) literature: Anna Crigger

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“Cutting literature off from the old, high transcendental truths (located in the divine or the romantic self), these movements sequestered literariness in a peculiarly modern, academic, or knowledge-work version of rhetoric and logic. Literature became a self-contained "form" whose internally programmed complexity had to be "closely read" with technical attention" (Schreibman & Siemens).

This quote from “A Companion to Digital Literary Studies: Imagining the New Media Encounter” by Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens describes the changes from old literature to new literature, specifically discussing how literature has become self-contained. This reminded me of a YouTube video called “Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #3” by CrashCourse. This video is part of a playlist discussing how to navigate digital media, as it certainly can be tricky—especially in this day of age. Before the internet, literature was less accessible and academic-based literature was very scarce compared to today. In present day, academic literature is everywhere and more accessible, as all you must do to find academic or knowledge-based works is do a quick Google search or scroll through social media. However, this comes with some negatives. Because literature is so accessible, it is much easier to find false information, inaccurate sources, or fake news. The readers of present day must be very careful when reading information, and double check how factual the source actually is. Lateral reading is crucial nowadays, and without it is more than likely false information can be spread. Instead of just reading something, a reader has to closely and technically read all information. Furthermore, to make sure that information is factual, it is crucial to cross-check sources, authors, and external information. This video discusses lateral reading and its importance in digitized media. I also show some of these videos to my students to show how important it is to read laterally. I would definitely recommend looking at the other videos in the playlist as well.

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Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #3

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The first DH project that peaked my interest was the Visualizing Early Baltimore
(Links to an external site.) project/website. I'm a bit of a history nerd so it's not really a surprise that these stories and individualized experiences interested me; I actually used to be a history major once-upon-a-time before I switched to English. This DH project initially caught my eye when I read that Baltimore was the location being focused on, which I do not know much about. I have recently taken interest in learning the history of some of the major cities in the U.S. and Baltimore was one of those cities on my list. I also was interested in the fact that this DH project looked at historical documents like older public records and newspapers to recover the lives of early African Americans in Baltimore. I appreciated the sample stories/links that were posted to the main page towards the bottom. I thought it was fascinating in the sample story Fugitive Slaves and Free Relatives
(Links to an external site.) to learn about how/why/when enslaved people fled from Baltimore to freedom in the North, specifically Pennsylvania, and often experienced their names bring mentioned in various advertisements. This sample story uses an actual advertisement being run in Baltimore’s American and Commercial Daily Advertiser during the summer of 1815. It was of course hard to read about, yet very informative to learn that enslaved people also ran to Baltimore from other areas, seeking to blend into the city's large free black population. While they were seeking refuge in Baltimore, it must have been very difficult to blend in with those advertisements being displayed throughout the city.

The other DH project that I was interested in was the Suffrage: Women Fight for the Vote
(Links to an external site.) project. Like the Baltimore project discussed above, this project uses many historical documents and includes other contributors historical contributions/documents that focus on women's suffrage and important women in history. For example, there are links to many personal papers of influential women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Church Terrell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna E. Dickinson, Lucy Stone, and Alice Stone Blackwell. Furthermore, I appreciate the fact that the contributors of this project were hosting a December Suffrage Review challenge that celebrated 2020 being the 100 year anniversary of the approval of the 19th amendment. By looking at the design of the website, I loved that there was a section where it was listed documents/contributions that had been listed as completed for review, as well as listed as needs review. I thought that the addition of those documents allowed for additional research to be done and more areas of this topic to be explored. I followed one of the quick links that lead me to the Library of Congress Suffrage Exhibition
(Links to an external site.) page. This exhibit can be explored online from the comfort of your home, which I appreciated, and I had a good time exploring a museum for homework. Though I would've liked to see an exhibit like this in person, the online version was still super effective.

I was very impressed with both of these DH projects so I am a little intimidated if I were to create a project of my own. There were so many extra and useful resources made with additional links to follow. It was like creating a digital museum or database to explore many different types of information to keep the reader entertained. Both DH projects were easily maneuverable and I had a really easy and fun time clicking in different directions and exploring multiple corners of the websites. Providing accessibility for the readers allows for more room for interest to grow I think.

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What does this mean for Digitizing English Studies? 

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What does this mean for Digitizing English Studies? 

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In the post-COVID world, a very important area for education. and research is likely to be Digital Humanities. Students of English Literature should be equipped with new skills in learning and research to survive in the new scenario. This video is an introduction to how you can get ready for it.

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Cultural Studies terms: Digital Humanities NEW AREA IN RESEARCH IN ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS

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Courses and get course completion certificate: https://www.simplilearn.com/skillup-f...
The digital age continues to disrupt every aspect of the business. Simplilearn Digital Transformation Academy will help you identify key opportunities and skills deficits. Featuring core digital disciplines such as cloud computing and digital marketing, our broader curriculum allows each of your departments to upskill and overcome competency gaps, aligning your digital strategy to your enhanced capabilities. Master the 3 Key Elements of Digital Transformation. Digital transformation isn’t just about technology. It’s also about aligning your teams and processes to foster innovation. Simplilearn’s Digital Transformation Academy makes it easy to educate and coordinate all organizational levels.

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Digital Transformation | What is Digital Transformation | Digital Transformation 2018 | Simplilearn

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The claim that learning online can improve learning/teaching is usually faced with positive feedback, however the use for online learning is almost entirely based off necessity. This article analyzes how teachers and students respond to the adoption of combining online learning with in-person learning. Similar to Alsubaie and Ashuraidah’s article, “Exploring Writing Individually and Collaboratively Using Google Docs in EFL Contexts” and Hannay and Newvine’s “Perceptions of distance learning: A comparison of online and traditional learning,” the idea of online learning is that it puts an emphasis on growing metacognitive skills including: taking responsibility for one’s own learning, regulating one’s own learning, analyze a critical consciousness (develop critical thinking skills), and reflection. With this model, it is the teacher’s job to support the learners, while the learners develop ownership over their own learning process. The purpose of blending online learning with traditional learning is to encourage learners to take an active role in their own learning. Unfortunately, for this particular article blending online learning within the traditional classroom did not interest educators or learners, rather they just used the online resources for additional help. This article was written in 2007, however, where online learning did not have as much of a presence compared to present day 2020.

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Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities

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Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities

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GEORGE H. WILLIAMS

Over the last several decades, scholars have developed standards for how best to create, organize, present, and preserve digital information so that future generations of teachers, students, scholars, and librarians may still use it. What has remained neglected for the most part, however, are the needs of people with disabilities. As a result, many of the otherwise most valuable digital resources are useless for people who are-for example-deaf or hard of hearing, as well as for people who are blind, have low vision, or have difficulty distinguishing particular colors. While professionals working in educational technology and commercial web design have made significant progress in meeting the needs of such users, the humanities scholars creating digital projects all too often fail to take these needs into account. This situation would be much improved if more projects embraced the concept of universal design, the idea that we should always keep the largest possible audience in mind as we make design decisions, ensuring that our final product serves the needs of those with disabilities as well as those without.

It is imperative that digital humanities work take into account the important insights of disability studies in the humanities, an interdisciplinary field that considers disability "not so much a property of bodies as a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do," in the words of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a prominent figure in the field (6). Digital knowledge tools that assume everyone approaches information with the same abilities and using the same methods risk excluding a large percentage of people. In fact, such tools actually do the work of disabling people by preventing them from using digital resources altogether. We must broaden our understanding of the ways in which people use digital resources. For example, visually impaired people take advantage of digital technologies for "accessibility," technologies that (with their oral/aural and tactile interfaces) are fascinatingly different than the standard screen-keyboard-mouse combination, forcing us to rethink our embodied relationship to data. Learning to create scholarly digital archives that take into account these human differences is a necessary task no one has yet undertaken.

In what follows I consider the somewhat arbitrary concept of disability and assistive technology, argue why the digital humanities community should adopt a universal design approach, explain what a universal design approach would look like, and then offer a few specific suggestions for collaborative projects that should be undertaken by digital humanists.

Questioning Disability

I first became interested in these issues as a graduate student working with Garland-Thomson when she was a faculty fellow at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) in the fall of 2001. During this experience, I was forced to reevaluate my assumptions about using computers and designing web pages. Garland-Thomson worked with the staff at MITH to create an online academic resource site for disability studies, and we decided to design the website with maximum accessibility. To do so, we needed to think about the needs of people who are blind, have low vision, or have difficulty navigating because of the clutter that often accumulates on web pages. (We had no plans to include audio, so addressing the needs of people who are deaf or hard of hearing was not in our plan.) At the same time, we aimed for a visual design that would appeal to sighted users. We kept the layout simple and added certain features specifically for certain kinds of users. For example, because tech-savvy blind people often have their computer read websites out loud using what is known as screen-reading software, many find it tedious to listen to the identical detailed navigation menu on every page within a given site. To solve this problem, we inserted a tiny image-a transparent GIF exactly one pixel square, to be exact-at the beginning of each page with an alt attribute that read, "Skip to main content." This image would be invisible to sighted users, but those listening to the page with screen-reading software-which reads aloud the alt attributes of images embedded in an HTML page-could use that GIF as their cue to jump past what they did not need to hear in order to get to the information that they did want to hear. We also made sure that every image tag had an alt attribute where necessary, although in general we kept images to a minimum. For advice on accessibility issues, we worked with a blind person who used screen-reading software to listen to the web, rather than reading it off of a visual display as a sighted person would do. She demonstrated this software for me, and I was surprised by how quickly the words were spoken by the synthesized voice that came from her laptop's speakers. In fact, I could not understand anything at all that she was doing. To accommodate me, she adjusted the settings to slow down significantly the synthesized speech, at which point I could understand the words but still found myself unable to orient myself on a given page or within a given website. This scenario caused me to reevaluate my understanding of what it means to be disabled, as she clearly was using abilities that I did not-and still do not-have: I had not trained myself to be able to process auditory information as efficiently as she could.

Walter Ong famously wrote, "Technologies are artificial, but ...artificiality is natural to humans" (81). Ong's concern is with writing as a fundamentally artificial process that has been so "internalized" by humans that it appears to be as natural to us as talking. Ong's observation is part of a larger cultural critique that highlights the socially constructed nature of the ways we perceive technology and its role in our lives. To those of us who are more or less comfortable with the existing dominant model of using computers, anything different, like a fast screen reader, seems alien, and the potential shortcomings of our familiar model of some combination of keyboard, mouse, and visual display remain invisible to us. We classify some software and hardware tools as "assistive technology"-sometimes the term "adaptive technology" is used instead-because they have been designed specifically to assist those people with "special needs." We might consider, however, that there is no "natural" way to interact with the 1's and 0's that make up the data we are interested in creating, transmitting, receiving, and using; there is only the model we have chosen to think of as natural. All technology is assistive, in the end.

Finally, we would do well to be aware of the range of "assistive"-technology software applications and hardware devices that do not work in the same ways as the devices used by nondisabled people. In addition to being compatible with desktop computers, laptops, smart phones, and tablet devices, the materials we create should also work well with such tools as refreshable braille displays, digital talking book devices, screen reader applications, and screen magnification software.

Universal Design Defined

The term "universal design" was invented by architect Ronald Mace, founder of North Carolina State University's (NCSU) Center for Universal Design. According to the NCSU College of Design, the term "describe[s] the concept of designing all products and the built environment to be aesthetic and usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone, regardless of their age, ability, or status in life" ("Ronald L. Mace"). Wendy Chisolm and Matt May write that to embrace universal design principles is to "approach every problem ...with the ultimate goal of providing the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people possible" (2). Mace argues for the importance of distinguishing between universal design principles and accessibility principles. To embrace accessibility is to focus design efforts on people who are disabled, ensuring that all barriers have been removed. To embrace universal design, by contrast, is to focus "not specifically on people with disabilities, but all people" (Mace). Something created to assist a person with a disability-to make their environment more accessible in some way-might not be affordable or aesthetically pleasing even if it is usable and helpful. Something created using universal design principles, on the other hand, is designed "for a very broad definition of user that encourages attractive, marketable products that are more usable by everyone" (Mace). Devoting efforts to accessibility might improve the built environment for disabled people, but devoting efforts to universal design improves the built environment for all people. Mace cites the example of the automatic garage door opener as a consumer product created with universal design principles: it is affordable; it appeals to and is useful to people both with and without disabilities. Another frequently cited example of universal design is the sidewalk curb cut; initially created to allow people in wheelchairs to cross the street more easily, curb cuts became recognized as useful also to other people such as someone making a delivery with a dolly, a traveler pulling luggage on wheels, a parent pushing a child in a stroller, or a person walking beside their bicycle. Whether in a physical or a digital environment, designers are always making choices about accessibility. However, not all designers are aware of how their choices affect accessibility. Universal design is design that involves conscious decisions about accessibility for all, and it is a philosophy that should be adopted more widely by digital humanities scholars.

Why Universal Design?

Before I recommend how to adopt universal design principles, I need to explain the several reasons why we should do so. First, ensuring that digital resources created with federal funding are accessible is the law in many countries. In the United States, for example, the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was amended in 1998 with what is now referred to as Section 508 to require that all federal agencies "developing, procuring, maintaining, or using electronic and information technology" ensure that disabled people "have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access to and use of the information and data" by people who are not disabled (U.S. General Services Administration, "Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, as Amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998."). American government agencies that fund digital humanities projects do not currently require proof of accessibility, but there is no reason to assume that this will always be the case. In addition to the United States, the list of nations with laws or policies requiring web accessibility includes Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, India, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Spain (Chisolm and May, 14-15). At some point in the future, project directors seeking government funding could be turned down if they are unable to demonstrate in their grant proposals that the results of their work will be accessible. Rather than wait until such time at which the laws begin to be enforced, we should start now to follow the existing guidelines for accessibility and to develop our own guidelines and tools for authoring and evaluating accessible resources. Not all digital humanities projects are created with government funding, of course, but enough of them are that this is a significant issue. Furthermore, instructors who wish to use digital humanities resources in their courses will need to ensure that those resources are accessible if they teach at an institution that receives any sort of government funding. Otherwise, they make themselves and their institution vulnerable to legal action.

Second, universal design is efficient. In order to adhere to the "alternative means of access" subsection of Section 508, American web designers used to create alternative, accessible versions of their content to parallel the original content. However, coding everything twice-first for nondisabled people and then again for disabled people-is time consuming and expensive. Fortunately, web standards have developed enough that this duplication of effort is no longer necessary. Instead, it is now possible to create just one version of a resource and to make design choices that ensure the resource suits the needs of all users, disabled and nondisabled alike. The ability to separate structure from presentation is particularly useful in this regard.

Third, applying universal design principles to digital resources will make those resources more likely to be compatible with multiple devices. To create an online resource that only works with a desktop or laptop computer is to exclude people who would prefer to access the resource with a smart phone, a tablet, or some other mobile device. The Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium points out that there is "significant overlap between making a website accessible for a mobile device and for people with disabilities" (Henry, "Web Content Accessibility"). Compatibility with mobile devices is important because an increasing number of people are using such devices to access the web. In the United States, for example, young adults between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three make up the largest segment of the population of web users at 35 percent (Zickuhr, 4), and 65 percent of those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine use a mobile device to go online (Smith, 5). Furthermore, those more likely to use a mobile device for online access include African Americans, Hispanics, and individuals from lower-income households (Smith, 10). If the digital humanities is to create resources accessible by a diverse array of people, then compatibility with mobile devices is a necessity.

Fourth and finally, it is the right thing to do. We recognize the importance of open access for scholarly materials, but "open access means more than simply making stuff available," as Jeremy Boggs, humanities design architect at the University of Virginia's Scholars' Lab, has said. We would never use a proprietary format for preserving and sharing our work, in part because to do so would be to exclude those people who cannot afford or do not have access to the necessary software to use that format. However, few of us think twice about whether or not the format we have chosen and the design choices we have made exclude disabled people. It might be tempting to assume that few, if any, disabled people are interested in or need to make use of our work, but by creating barriers to access we are ensuring that such people will never have the opportunity to participate in the digital humanities. According to a report from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, 81 percent of all adults report using the Internet, but only 54 percent of disabled adults do (Fox, "Americans," 3). Of course, disabled adults are also more likely to be older, to have lower incomes, and to have less education than nondisabled adults, and all of these demographic factors are correlated with lower levels of Internet use (Fox, "What People"). However, inaccessible design choices remain a significant barrier to information for disabled people, and removing those barriers to information can only contribute to higher levels of education and perhaps higher levels of income as well. If our goals include the ability to share our work with as wide and diverse an audience as possible, then we should embrace universal design principles.

Designing for Accessibility

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to reiterate the specific guidelines for designing accessible web resources, especially when so many useful guidelines already exist. Digital humanists interested in learning more about these guidelines would do well to start with the Web Accessibility Initiative website hosted by the World Wide Web Consortium, where they will find a wide variety of specific recommendations as well as references to additional resources. Many helpful tutorials may be found on other sites, of course, but the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines specifically and the World Wide Web Consortium guidelines more generally are widely considered to be web standards followed by those who create and maintain web-based resources. There are, however, specific projects that the digital humanities community should undertake in order to improve greatly the accessibility of the resources we create as well as the ease with which we make those resources accessible.

Specific Project Ideas

accessibility tools for content management systems

Accessibility would be much easier for most content creators to achieve if a suite of free and open-source accessibility tools were developed for popular content management systems (CMS). A list of the most commonly used CMSes for digital humanities projects would include-but not be limited to-WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, MediaWiki, and Joomla. Each of these has a number of appealing features: they are relatively easy to install, often available as one-click-installation options through commercial web-hosting services; they are free and open-source projects; and their appearance and functions may be customized through the use of such add-ons as themes, plug-ins, modules, and extensions. A valuable project would be for the digital humanities community to develop a collection of add-ons that would integrate easily with these CMSes and improve the accessibility of the websites they deliver. Making available a ready-made set of accessibility tools for developers to add to their sites would allow individual projects to avoid the work of developing and evaluating their own accessibility features independently of one another. These tools could not only provide end users with a more accessible interface but also provide content creators with built-in accessibility evaluation functions, facilitating good design choices from the ground up rather than after a site has already been completed.

FORMAT TRANSLATION TOOLS

In July of 2010, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University hosted a workshop involving twelve digital humanists who were tasked with creating a useful digital humanities tool in one week. The result was Anthologize, "a free, open-source plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts" ("About," Anthologize). Anthologize imports texts from RSS feeds and then translates them into one of a handful of alternate formats: ePub, PDF, TEI (plus HTML), or RTF. Blind people who use the web are in need of a digital humanities project that either extends Anthologize or creates a similar tool so that RSS feeds may be converted easily and automatically into XML formats that work with digital talking book devices or with braille output devices.

A digital talking book is an XML document created to be compatible with any of a number of devices that will read the document aloud. The format includes metadata that facilitates navigation between different sections of the document, and it may include recordings of a person reading the document aloud, or it may be designed to be read aloud as synthesized speech by a device ("ANSI/NISO Z39.86"). Since 1996, the DAISY Consortium has been working to establish and promote an open standard for digital talking books ("About Us"). One of their most powerful products is the DAISY Pipeline, "a cross-platform, open source framework for DTB-related document transformations" ("DAISY Pipeline"). A well-structured document in a format like TEI or HTML is ideally suited to be automatically translated into the DAISY format through a software process that makes use of the DAISY Pipeline. A CMS add-on like Anthologize that accomplishes this task efficiently, automatically, and easily would be an extremely powerful tool in the hands of content creators, allowing them to easily make their texts available as digital talking books, providing access to information for the many people who make use of digital talking books as their primary method of reading.

People literate in braille often prefer to read by that method rather than by listening to texts. Reading content through braille provides a deeper understanding of that content for many, yet producing well-formatted braille files is accomplished through one of two expensive methods. First, professionals who are certified braille translators may be hired to create well-formatted braille. Second, a number of commercial braille translation software applications may be used; the most reliable applications cost several hundred dollars and are cost prohibitive to low-income users and nonspecialized content creators. A CMS add-on like Anthologize could be such a translator if it incorporated Liblouis, a widely used open-source braille translation engine. Such an add-on would allow braille readers to access online texts through such devices as refreshable braille displays or braille embossers. Clearly, creating a free and easy-to-use online braille translator would make a tremendous difference in the lives of individuals who need braille translations of online content and in the ability of content creators to reach braille-literate audiences.

TOOLS FOR CROWDSOURCED CAPTIONS, SUBTITLES, AND TRANSCRIPTS

Online information presented in audio or video format is not accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing end users without captions. These individuals benefit from online captioning as well as from written transcriptions presented as separate and independent documents. Creating captions and transcriptions makes such information subject to search and computer analysis in ways not currently possible with audio and video alone. Additionally, individuals without disabilities often find transcriptions easier to follow. The time and expense of captioning or transcribing is a significant obstacle to making accessible an online project featuring several hours of video or audio. Currently, a number of desktop software applications provide an interface designed to facilitate captioning videos or transcribing audio. However, none of them that I have found are free, and because they are not online tools none of them allow projects to take advantage of one of the web's most powerful and relatively new practices: crowdsourcing.

"Crowdsourcing" is a term coined by Jeff Howe in 2006 to describe online projects that make use of free or extremely inexpensive labor provided by "enthusiasts" around the world who are interested in donating their time to a project that interests them. Several digital humanities projects have experimented with taking this approach to transcribing digital images of documents, with mixed results: nonexpert transcribers sometimes make a significant number of mistakes when transcribing material written in an unfamiliar hand (Cohen). However, a digital file in which the audio has been clearly recorded stands to result in a more accurate transcription, even by nonexpert transcribers. The Center for History and New Media is currently developing a promising online tool named Scripto, which "will allow users to contribute transcriptions to online documentary projects" ("About," Scripto). Transcriptions of images of documents greatly enhance accessibility for people who are blind because screen readers will be able to read aloud the transcriptions while image-only documents are inaccessible. People who are deaf or hard of hearing, however, are in need of a digital humanities project that presents a user-friendly interface like Scripto for hearing people to caption videos or transcribe audio. Universal Subtitles, created by the Participatory Culture Foundation, is an admirable example of such an interface ("Frequently Asked Questions"). However, captions created with this interface are stored on the Universal Subtitles server, rather than in a project's content management system. An extremely valuable digital humanities accessibility project would be one that facilitates crowdsourced transcriptions and captions but that works with a variety of different content management systems, saving the resulting text in the relevant database field of the CMS or in a shared, open repository.

Conclusion: Reciprocal Benefits

People with disabilities will benefit significantly if the digital humanities community pursues projects such as these and begins to take seriously the need to adopt universal design principles. However, by working to meet the needs of disabled people-and by working with disabled people through usability testing-the digital humanities community will also benefit significantly as it rethinks its assumptions about how digital devices could and should work with and for people. Graham Pullin, a senior lecturer in the University of Dundee School of Computing, has observed that the prevailing assumption in product design is that new developments in the mainstream slowly "trickle-down" to "specialist products for people with disabilities" (xiii). However, as Pullin points out, sometimes the effect works the other way, "when the issues around disability catalyze new design thinking and influence a broader design culture in return" (xiii). What I am arguing is that infusing the digital humanities with universal design principles will result in just this kind of reciprocal relationship.

Matthew Kirschenbaum has described "the current state of new media studies" as one "in which the graphical user interface is often uncritically accepted as the ground zero of the user's experience" (34). In arguing that computer storage deserves more critical attention from scholars than it has traditionally received, Kirschenbaum adopts Nick Montfort's term "screen essentialism" to describe the fallacy of assuming that all computer interaction occurs through the interface of the screen. Montfort points out that screen essentialism obscures the diversity of computing interfaces that have existed prior to the appearance of the modern electronic screen; in particular, as he describes, early computing programs relied on paper interfaces. Montfort's point is historical, but screen essentialism also obscures the diversity of contemporary interfaces used by people with disabilities and, increasingly, by all people.

Blind computer users, for example, have no use for a screen, and they most often use an interface that is either tactile, in the form of refreshable braille devices, or audible, in the form of screen-reading software or digital books. We might also reconsider our "essentialist" thinking about the keyboard and the mouse and not just because of the technologies that we perceive to be specific to disabled people. Speech recognition technologies, while far from perfect, are already accurate enough to allow writers-if that is still the correct term-to compose documents without the need for typing. And the growth of touch screens, primarily but not exclusively available on mobile devices, bring the possibility of a mouse-less future ever closer. Both of these technologies are extremely useful for people who are disabled, but they are used for the most part by people who are not. To continue to create projects designed primarily for the screen-keyboard-mouse environment would be foolish: if a resource doesn't work on a device that lacks one of those components, then that resource is already worthless to a significant number of computer users, disabled and nondisabled alike. As we observe contemporary computing devices proliferate and diversify, we need to plan for a future in which our current digital resources continue to be not only useful but usable.

I am grateful to Jennifer Guiliano for this suggestion.

My understanding of braille and braille technologies would not have been possible without advice and input from Tina Herzberg.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boggs, Jeremy. Instant message to author. February 21, 2011.

Chisholm, Wendy, and Matthew May. Universal Design for Web Applications . Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly Media, 2009.

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature . New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word . London: Routledge, 1982.

Pullin, Graham. Design Meets Disability . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009.

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"Chapter 12: Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities | George H. Williams" in "Debates in the Digital Humanities" on Debates in the DH Manifold

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GEORGE H. WILLIAMS Over the last several decades, scholars have developed standards for how best to create, organize, present, and preserve digital information so that future generations of teachers, students, scholars, and librarians may still use it. What has remained neglected for the most part, however, are the needs of people with disabilities.

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This video provides a quick overview of what digital accessibility is, why it is important and how organizations can benefit from implementing accessible design.

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Tech in the Classroom-Student Perspective 

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Tech in the Classroom-Student Perspective 

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Technology is all around us, such as social media & communication (texting, fb messenger, snapchat, etc.) and electronic devices (cell phone, tablet/iPad, laptop, etc.). Technology being crucial in the classroom is no surprise because it helps keep lessons current and interesting and use of technology helps kids learn through familiar tools. Generally, technology being used in the classroom is easy for kids (and some teachers) to adapt, so long as usability is kept in mind. Combining use of internet & online media/mediums with the face-to-face classroom allows for many mediums of learning to be acquired, like online discussions/discussion boards, chat rooms, and web boards. Students can get the structure of an in-person classroom AND learn autonomously at the same time. Furthermore, introverted students can speak up without anxiety (via chat room/discussion board); in addition, diversification of activities is provided (multiple activities can happen simultaneously via in-person & online). Lastly, students are encouraged to enhance their time management and student skills by determining their own time and assignment schedule, thus preparing them for the workplace and its expectations on being able to adapt to changes regarding technology and critical thinking.

I would like to note, however, that adding parental controls and limitations on using parts of the internet is problematic, as younger generations are getting better and better at overcoming these steps of limitation. Because there are hardly any limitations on using the internet, I have a concern of keeping students engaged in the learning material that takes place online. Keeping students focused allows for limitations on internet usage (i.e. they won't become distracted if they are engaged in the educational material).

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Technology in the classroom | Ethan Dickens | TEDxPascoCountySchoolsED

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What Is Digital humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?

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What Is Digital humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?

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Digital Humanities is becoming more and more popular in the Humanities, specifically in English departments. Personally, I have noticed the Digital Humanities playing a larger part in my Master's program in English versus my Bachelor's program, also in English studies. I earned my Bachelor's in English Education, so I would think that DH would play a larger role in my learning considering that I needed to learn how to plan relevant and interesting lessons. However, this was not the case. DH has played a much stronger role in my education now that I am working on my Master's in Rhetoric and Technical Communication. I've made websites, graphics, logos, digital bibliographies, blogs, and many more digital projects. I wish that I learned this skills in my undergraduate time as a student.

Since DH has been more involved in my learning, I have been connected and have worked with many departments across EWU's campus, which was not the case before. I have learned how to connect with those who participate, learn, and work in different environments, thus connecting the workforce community. DH has informed me and others within my cohort that English studies doe not need to be closed off and working with people in other environments, experiences, and knowledge areas is a necessity when growing education or producing a product. Because of DH, I would argue that English studies has become interconnected with other majors and areas of study, thus encouraging people to work together and incorporate ideas instead of keeping them to oneself or to a specific area of study.

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What is Pecha Kucha?

In essence Pecha Kucha is an interesting way of making a formal presentation. Some uses of it may be copywrited. Therefore, we are going to do a Peka Chuka “like” presentation, in other words, using some of the concepts, but not actually signing up for or becoming a member of the Pecha Kucha world. Basically, this will be exactly 20 slides with no more than 20 seconds per slide. You can go to the link below to learn more.

https://www.pechakucha.com

Three Parts

Assignment Part 1: Pick the organization that you are going to do your case on. You will do this in one of the first Discussion Boards. See specifics in the DB.

Assignment Part 2: Pecha Kucha Dress Rehearsal of your final presentation. This is very important as you will get feedback from your peers that will help you to do a better job. You will also get to see how others are doing it and get ideas from them.

Assignment Part 3: Your final Case Study Presentation: You will submit your final Panopto Recording for grading and feedback. See specifics in the Assignment labeled Big Case Study. The Discussion Board Dress Rehearsal presentation and The Final Case Study will be done by creating a Panopto recording and then submitting it.

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Technology in the classroom collaboration etc

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Example of a digital primary or scholarly text, that illustrates or represents DH concepts

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Example of a digital primary or scholarly text, that illustrates or represents DH concepts

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"@DefendBoyleHts is not associated with any one hashtag but often uses numerous hashtags to connect with a variety of issues, users, and affects, demonstrating the nuanced connection between gentrification and other elements of systemic racism, like police brutality and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainment of undocumented citizens. A chart plotting secondary hashtags (Figure 9, below) visualizes the diversity of issues, groups, and affects that DBH brings into anti-gentrification encounters through the use of hashtags. Closer inspection of the underlying data often shows these hashtags connect to locations and targeted direct actions as well as to activists and ordinary citizens, both locally and over widely separated geographical distance (Figure 10, below)" (Desiree Dighton 2019). Similar to how this DH project, "

Arranging a Rhetorical Feminist Methodology: THE VISUALIZATION OF ANTI-GENTRIFICATION RHETORIC ON TWITTER," uses hashtags with datasets to determine gentrification and other discriminatory focuses, this YouTube video by Vox uses their own datasets to determine similar findings with major cities in the U.S. and where people live. Their findings conclude that during the work day, the cities are more diverse because people of many races and ethnicities are travelling to work in the city; however, findings show that white workers are the main population traveling into the city for work. The datasets used found that non-white populations, specifically African Americans, live inside this cities within poorer areas with less community funding. On the other hand, white workers can afford to travel from farther away to get to their city jobs. This video also discusses gentrification and how it has played out over the last 100 years. Vox gives some historical context, like the DH project, specifically on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Workplaces may have become more diverse, but not residential areas.

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American segregation, mapped at day and night

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Unfortunately, there's a negative to the Digital Humanities; data becomes "free." What I mean by that is because we as a modernized society is forced to participate in online activities for school, work, social, and personal life, our data is being mined regularly. Social media especially mines our data all the time, as we give them our information that may not seem to be too personal such as the following: first and last name, birthday, email address, job title, etc. For example, companies like Target request information that is somewhat personal whenever a registry is created; for a wedding registry, information such as the first and last names of the couples, wedding date, birthdays, etc. is requested. Now that information is becoming more accessible, personal information is becoming readily available as well. Perhaps some information wasn't meant to be public.

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Opinion _ Facebook and the Surveillance Society- The Other Coup - The New York Times