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The Covid-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented shift to online education across the United States. Having access to the internet became the new school bus system, and online learning tools became essential. As technology becomes continually integrated into education, the need for equitable access to technology also increases. With this shift, the gap in digital literacy education has become apparent. Equitable access to online education is a step toward giving power back to learners by providing the tools to succeed academically. Barriers prominent in online education are clear access to information. Factors such as dense texts, text size, color contrast, lack of accessibility tags, and captioning create additional barriers for students diagnosed with learning disabilities.
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Webquity is a digital accessibility software company founded in 2021 and operates within the educational technology industry. The company's mission is to make online education an equitable playing field by providing universal accessibility software to differently-abled users. This is done through a personalized evaluation to identify and address student learning needs. The product, ‘prescription’, is a web plug-in that modifies websites (‘digital glasses’) based on the user’s needs determined by an evaluation. Current companies within the space consult with website hosts to diagnose and manually fix issues. Our competitive advantage is being able to identify and automatically fix accessibility issues across the web. We have developed a Google Chrome extension (Appendix) to take any website text content and make it more accessible for students with visual dyslexia symptoms and minor visual impairments. By allowing them to choose their online learning aids, students are able to adjust web pages resulting in increased reading speed and comprehension.
Webquity is a digital accessibility software company that aims to make online education an equitable playing field by providing universal accessibility tools to students with visual dyslexia symptoms and minor visual impairments. We first provide a personalized evaluation to identify and address student learning needs, the ’Prescription.’ Then, the product, ‘Digital Glasses,’ is a web extension that modifies website content to be accessible for a student’s specific needs determined by an evaluation. As a result, students receive an improved online learning experience. Webquity’s goal is to make online learning an equitable, accessible playing field.
