The Nora Project
Now in its sixth year, non-profit focusing on accessible classrooms The Nora Project provides professional development for educators and curriculum for students, and routinely works with businesses and the larger community to develop more inclusive environments. Employing VITAC’s accessibility solutions has helped The Nora Project reach a larger audience and bring more people into the conversation.
The Nora Project has conducted training for teachers in 10 states and Canada that includes live virtual instruction and recorded video content. As a group dedicated to inclusion, making its content accessible to everyone was a must, and finding a reliable accessibility partner was of vital importance.
“VITAC has just been so reliable. The scheduling process is so easy, the billing is so easy and fair, and it’s just a really great solution. It is so easy and makes such a massive difference not only for people with disabilities but for all people.”
VITAC’s accurate captioning, searchable transcripts, and professional audio description services enabled The Nora Project to produce more inclusive and accessible training programs as well as virtual open houses and fundraising events. Incorporating those accessibility features, Schrero says, sets a strong example for those attending the group’s events, and demonstrates just how easy it is to include captions and build more inclusive classrooms and communities.
● A cost-effective and straightforward accessibility solution.
● Professional human captioners who understand the nuances of language, and who bring human sensitivities and contextual awareness to the captioning table.
● A dedicated and responsive support team, available 24/7.
● The option to share transcripts of each meeting or event with attendees for future reference.
On the Benefits of Accessible Communications
Schrero says that adding captions was “an obvious first must-do. The more methods you have for communicating, the more different kinds of people you can reach. So if you have the audio description, the transcripts, the live captioning – all of these things are ways for reaching different audiences that might really be moved by what you have to say.”
On Choosing VITAC
“We sort of scrapped together captioners at first, and the quality was not the same. We had people cancel the night before big events, and then we didn’t have a captioner available. A colleague referred me to VITAC because I was panicking, and we’ve used them for every single live event we’ve done since.”
On How Accessible Communications Touches Everyone
“It’s been really great for us. And not only for us, but I think it’s modeled for our teachers how to support their students, and then their students have ideas on how to support each other. So the whole thing is just a great ripple effect in terms of how we teach inclusive practices.”
“Any time we are gathering large groups of people, and we’re hosting, we schedule with VITAC.”
Promotes disability inclusion by empowering educators and engaging students and communities. The nonprofit trains and coaches teachers, and offers a suite of social emotional learning programs that dive deeply into the concepts of empathy and inclusion, explicitly addressing disability and difference as a part of human diversity. Its programs connect what students are learning to the real world, offering them real opportunities to practice what they learn during direct instruction.
