Increasing STEM Accessibility

Diversity in science and technology is crucial. By leveraging different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, STEM fields become enriched with unique insights that drive problem-solving and innovation. Over 40 million Americans live with disabilities, yet they are significantly underrepresented in STEM fields. Research shows that only 3% of the STEM workforce includes individuals with disabilities. These individuals often benefit from hands-on and tailored educational approaches, which are only available in traditional educational settings. Makerspaces, with their adaptive tools and resources, can help bridge this gap, creating an inclusive environment for STEM learning. However, these spaces often lack the necessary accessibility features to fully support individuals with disabilities. Creating a significant gap between the potential of makerspaces and the needs of a large portion of the population.

Current Issues in STEM Accessibility

Limited Access to Makerspaces

Many makerspaces, which are vital for hands-on learning and experimentation, are often physically inaccessible to individuals with disabilities. Additionally, architectural barriers and a lack of accessible onsite tools can deny many the access to STEM learning opportunities.

Lack of Learning Resources

Current STEM materials, project guides, and tutorials often overlook the needs of those with disabilities. The majority of resources are not designed with accessibility in mind, often not providing materials in braille or closed captions for videos, slowing the learning process for many individuals with different types of disabilities.

Social Isolation in STEM

Individuals with disabilities often encounter social barriers within STEM fields that lead to isolation. This lack of community can be associated with physical separations in learning environments, support from peers, and a general lack of representation, which can stop participation and engagement in STEM.

Our Solution to making STEM more Accessible

It is clear those with disabilities are underrepresented and lack support systems to help them discover and obtain a career in STEM. Our sponsor, Dr. Jared Duval aims to bring awareness to these inequities while broadening STEM opportunities for those with disabilities by leading our team through the creation of mobile application that will connect makerspaces to people of all disability backgrounds. By working with Dr. Duval and prioritizing accessibility, we can empower those with disabilities to explore their passions in STEM, creating a collaborative and supportive environment built around makerspaces.

Our solution to address these issues is a crowdsourcing mobile application that will transform the makerspace community and landscape as a whole. Our application will serve as a centralized hub for sharing STEM projects, learning resources, and training materials with disabled individuals. Local Makerspaces will be able to upload STEM content and learning resources onto our platform, allowing users to complete tutorials and engage with STEM concepts on a deeper level than ever before. Through an accessible interface, users will also be able to chat with others, reach out to local makerspaces, and connect with the community around them. Through this groundbreaking application, we will be able to provide accessible, intuitive, and transformative tools to the disabled community, helping bridge a gap in their STEM education.

The initial concept for this project was provided by our sponsor, in the form of a capstone project proposal.

High Level Requirements

Hosting STEM Content and Learning Resources

Our application will serve as a central hub for hosting and sharing STEM-related resources, projects, and training materials. Makerspaces will have the ability to upload their resources, which can include videos, documents, and images, ensuring that users can access a wide variety of content that is both relevant and accessible.

Accessible UI for Multiple Disabilities

The user interface will be designed with accessibility as a priority to cater to users with different types of disabilities, including visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments. Utilizing principles from Nielsen’s Heuristics and the Material Design framework, our interface will be intuitive and supportive of a diverse user base.

Connection to Local Makerspaces

The application will facilitate connections between users and local makerspaces. This will include a system for finding nearby makerspaces, enhancing involvement with community and accessibility of local STEM resources.

User Profile Creation and Management

Users will be able to create and manage their profiles, which can include details such as their name, location, favorite hobbies, areas of interest within STEM, and tutorials completed on the platform. Profiles can be made public to develop community interactions and networking, increasing the social and collaborative aspect of our platform.

Envisioned Solution

Our envisioned solution is a crowd-sourced mobile application, available on both Android and IOS, that bridges the gap between makerspaces and individuals with disabilities. Our goal is to transform the accessibility of STEM resources, making them more inclusive and available to those who often face barriers in traditional educational settings.

System Architecture

The architecture of our solution is built on a framework utilizing Firebase as the backend to manage user data and interactions securely. The front end is developed using React Native, ensuring a seamless and accessible user experience across different devices and platforms. This dual-framework setup will allow for real-time updates and interactions.

Key Components of the System

Our application will be comprised of several key modules:

• User Authentication: Ensures a secure login experience and data protection for each user.
• Resource Hosting: Allows makerspaces to upload educational content, which is accessible via a user-friendly interface.
• Community Interaction: Local makerspace discovery will allow users to connect with makerspaces in their area, deepening their engagement with the STEM community.
• Accessibility Features: Includes closed-caption videos, compatible with assistive technology, and easy navigation layouts to accommodate users with various disabilities.

Demonstration of Key Use Cases

The app overview below showcases how users can easily navigate our platform to complete tutorials, view their STEM learning outcomes, and manage their account, showing the impact of our application on the STEM community.

By addressing the critical needs as outlined by our sponsor, this mobile application will not only foster accessibility and inclusion but truly better the educational experiences of individuals with disabilities, empowering them to explore and thrive in STEM.

Front-end Technologies

For the front-end development, we chose React Native. This choice was driven by the need for a cross-platform mobile application that delivers a consistent user experience across both Android and iOS devices. React Native allows for fast development and deployment of user interfaces with a single codebase, significantly reducing development time while maintaining high performance and a native system feel.

Moreover, we chose React Native Paper, a Material Design-compliant library, to make sure our application adheres to modern design principles. React Native Paper provides a wide range of components that are customizable and responsive, making it easier to maintain a consistent look while meeting our accessibility standards.

Back-end Technologies

Google's Firebase was selected as our main back-end technology. It provides a suite of cloud-based services including authentication, databases, and hosting, which are extremly important for our application’s operation. Firebase's real-time database allows our application to sync data across all clients in real time, vital for the interactive and collaborative features of our app. Its security and scalability make it an excellent choice for handling sensitive user data and supporting a large number of users.

Other Technology Tools

Our team will also utilize several tools to support our coding and collaboration efforts. Visual Studio Code is be our primary IDE due to its wide ecosystem of extensions, built-in git control, and support for React Native development.

For version control, we will use GitHub to facilitate collaboration among our team members. Github will be the safest way to maintain our code and avoid any conflicting issues that may arise during development. Using a version control system will allow us to keep a documented trail of potential bugs or issues run into during development, and where they occurred in our version history. It also allows us to add features in a controlled version without overwriting older versions of our application.

GitHub Repository

Throughout the development of our project, all source code and documentation will be maintained in the following GitHub repository.