Note from CEO – February Issue

Dear friends,

In Kenya’s Digital Literacy Programme, what impact does the Ministry of Education seek to achieve? Of the many answers that leap to mind, digital literacy for all learners and their teachers, is in my view the most fruitful to consider. What is digital literacy? How do you deliver it? How do you measure it? Why is it so important? These big questions are shaping our work more than ever in 2017.

Because Accessibility is prerequisite to realizing digital literacy, these big questions led us to explore needs and challenges of disabled learners and their teachers — in collaboration with MoE, Kenya Institute for Special Education (KISE), Kenya Institute for the Blind (KIB), Kenya Union of the Blind (KUB), Benetech.org, and teachers and learners at Kitui School for the Blind, Kitui School for the Deaf, Thika Primary School for the Blind, and Thika High School for the Blind.

Most readers of this letter will be familiar with EPUB, the global open standard for digital publishing and e-reading that just last week combined forces with the W3C, the body that develops “foundational Web technologies” such as HTML, CSS, and XML. Perhaps some are less familiar with the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) Consortium that develops and promotes open technical standards to help build an “inclusive publishing ecosystem for everybody” — mainstream and disabled people alike. EPUB and DAISY provide both technology and developer communities to advance the creation and use of digital content everywhere. Their tools solve problems to make content accessible for all learners like those we visited in Kitui and Thika.

We’re very grateful for the wisdom, dedication and concrete insights of the head teachers, teachers and MoE team members collaborating with us as we apply technology to challenges they’re helping us to see and understand.

Warmest regards,
Will

Source: eKitabu