What

We are building an APP that will house a "Learning Centre" to contain resources on Digital Literacy.

Why

Covid has sped up transition of in-person activities to the digital medium. Jobs that were traditionally done in person can now be done remotely. While the world of able bodied and able minded people are encouraged to prepare to take advantage of this transition, this conversations is widely missing in the disability community. To ensure digital inclusion, Gateway has embarked upon app development focusing on introducing/increasing digital literacy. With the inclusion of the digital community in the digital world, the diversity will inherently impact the accessibility and innovation of this space.

How

The App is called GATEWAY, and we see ourselves as mainly curators of content, and not content developers. We also wish to use this app to reduce the "problem of plenty" and will hence minimize crowding the app.

It will have a few features, and the predominant one is "The Learning Centre" for which we are seeking students to find us resources. Digital Literacy is an ocean, and we are beginning with some specific target areas -the Global Categories for which content is being curated are:

1. Employment 2. Story Telling 3. Lifestyle (Mental Health, Food Security)

There are some existing resources we wish to curate on this app, but for ones that are missing, content creation is also an option. We are looking for students to assist with both. Ideally the students either live with a disability or are family members of someone with a disability- this is to ensure an anti-oppressive framework. Disability in this context of student-search refers to pan-disability, but the app is aimed for persons with developmental/intellectual disability.

Criteria

1. Primary Target audience: Persons on developmental/intellectual disability spectrum
2. Secondary Target Audience: Support network of the primary audience (family members, support staff, community supports)
3. Four personas will be created to assist with content curation.
4. Purpose of the Learning Centre: to serve as a stepping stone for increasing one's digital literacy, as opposed to an entire pathway. We dont want the app to assume any prescriptive notion on "steps that will guarantee an outcome" as that is limiting.
5. Content can take the shape of an image, document, infographics, videos.
6. Microlearning: Videos length preferred is a max of 10 minutes.

Students

1. We are looking for students who are interested in searching the web for content that is already available for specific subject-matter that we can share with you.

2. We are looking for students who wish to develop content.