Overview

Established in 1994, the Inclusive Media and Design Centre (previously Centre for Learning Technologies) designs, creates, and evaluates inclusive media. Our efforts are directed towards evaluating the existing conditions of production and reception of media to create solutions for access and enjoyment of media. We do so by: Exploring modalities of experience Examining policy and methodologies in media industries Creating tools and technology for making inclusive media Evaluating and documenting the effects of our efforts Many of our projects focus on technological accessibility for users of all abilities. Our current projects include: WebMoti, an educational tool for children with autism and their teachers in classroom management. NICKEL, a tool to help novice researchers to determine needs elicitation methods for their research studies. Alternative Audio Description: examining alternative approaches to audio description in television and live theatre. LiveDescribe, a free amateur audio description tool Enhanced Captioning: examining alternatives to traditional captioning in television and movies EnACT (Enhanced and Affective Captioning Tool), a free captioning tool Music Visualization: a visual representation of music that conveys meaning and information The Emoti-Chair: a chair designed to allow Deaf and hard of hearing individuals to feel music The Vibrochord: a keyboard designed to play purely tactile music on the Emoti-Chair Signlink Studio and Signlink CMS, a program designed for Deaf and hard of hearing vloggers We currently employ a group of undergraduate students, master’s students, PhD candidates and two full time staff at our facilities at Ryerson University.