Recent developments in the field of education have led to a proliferation of educational technologies (or “ed-tech”), yet access to educational content for students with special needs remains a challenge. This research study aims to assess the current state of accessibility in emerging ed-tech and to identify barriers in enabling educational content to be born accessible. Detailed discussions with various ed-tech platforms revealed less of a need for technical tools, but a more prevailing need for knowledge and education around accessibility – what it means and how best to incorporate accessibility into their platforms. The more experienced teams advocate incorporating accessibility into product development right from the design phase, while the younger teams expressed challenges in navigating accessibility laws and the dire need for easy-to-follow guidelines and best practices. A detailed review of educators' content creation processes reveals multiple dependencies in the ecosystem of ed-tech where partnerships and compatibilities are crucial in enabling accessibility throughout the process. Likewise, an urgent need exists for increasing awareness of accessibility among instructors authoring educational content using emerging ed-tech.

Beginning May of 2013 and ending in September, I worked with Grace After Fire (Grace), a virtual nonprofit organization that focuses on issues related to female veterans. Grace’s mission is to provide female veterans with the means to gain knowledge, insight and self-renewal. Grace’s mission is accomplished through peer support and resource referral. The aim of my thesis project was to conduct an analysis of Grace’s peer support system, Table Talk: Color Me Camo (Table Talk). Because Table Talk is a fairly new program for Grace, just over a year old, the outreach coordinators were eager to learn: 1) if they were indeed meeting their mission of empowering female veterans, and 2) the point-of-view of the peer facilitators who conduct Table Talk. To help Grace gain perspective, I interviewed women who had previously attended Table Talk, as well as peer facilitators responsible for coordinating the peer support system-all of whom are female veterans. The following is their story.

Half Price Books, Records, Magazines, Inc. (HPB), fills a unique niche by selling a variety of new, used and rare merchandise primarily in their chain of 116 stores in sixteen states and online. The company has noticed increased mobile device use among customers in their stores while sales have declined in recent years. To remain viable HPB is attempting to adapt to market forces in a timely manner while remaining continually interested in growth and innovation. A major part of adapting, growing, and innovating is the adoption and astute utilization of technology in-store and a more complete understanding of their customers’ activities and preferences. The goal is to make Half Price Books a more technologically savvy destination for shopping, community events, and entertainment. One purpose of this study is to give the company a better idea of how customers use technology in searching for merchandise including information searches generated in-store from mobile devices and how customers use the internet to find merchandise prior to and following their experiences in HPB’s stores. Another important purpose is to also determine what kinds of events such as book signings, poetry readings and other special events customers would like to see at Half Price …