CANnect, a Portal to Accessible
Online Education and Resources
By Rachel Rosenbaum
CANnect is a consortium of schools or
agencies providing services to persons who are
blind who have also embraced the concept of
online/distance education. They have collaborated in order to learn from each other, share best
practices, and reduce duplication. Our first executive director led us in a strategic planning effort to mutually agree on a mission and vision,
which we determined to be as follows:
Mission Statement
To create leading edge, user-friendly access to
usable online educational opportunities, learning
resources and life skills training for blind and visually impaired people, professionals and families.
CANnect aims to be an aggregator, a one
stop shopping place (like Orbitz, Travelocity,
Kayak) for persons who are blind or visually impaired (BVI) and their teachers and families to go
to locate accessible and usable online courses
and other resources. We are eager to become
acquainted with educators or rehabilitation professionals who share our passion for providing
online access to information and accessible resources, which we hope they will post on the
CANnect Portal: Course Catalogue.
CANnect, collaborating with 2 universities,
has been the recipient of 2 federal grants. One
grant is with Purdue University, responding to an
RFP from the U.S. Department of Education
called Stepping Stones; we proposed validating
and testing accessible Math output tools for
online math functions. To minimize discussion,
the team selected the textbook already in use at
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