Improving accessibility at Pearson

by Egle Juzenaite

Hi, I'm Egle! I am an MA Publishing (distance learning) student and also a fabulous International Qualifications Product Developer at Pearson Education. My role requires me to research and develop international GCSE and A-level qualifications for learners all around the world. I work on specifications and sample assessment materials and you may wonder how does that relate to publishing? Actually, it relates a lot! I work on writing, amending and typesetting a bunch of documents, including teacher's guides, student guides and learning materials.

One of the best experiences I had while working with Pearson is the redevelopment of one of our qualifications where the assessment component includes a listening task. My dissertation focused on accessibility of published materials for deaf and hard-of-hearing learners. I was thrilled when I spotted this opportunity to apply the knowledge from my MA dissertation to products in development. I was able to present my MA research to colleagues and suggest ideas for improving accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.  The products are still in development, so I'm yet to see the end results but I have high hopes.

I was also able to invite one of the connections I made while doing my research to deliver training on Deaf Awareness for the extended Pearson Team.  This meant that together with my colleagues we are able to understand the challenges that deaf learners encounter much better and feed this into content development. One of the conclusions of my dissertation, was that as a population we may not be aware of the challenges deaf learners have - the assumption is that because they can see they can read - which is not necessarily the case. There are other factors to consider which I am not going to into detail here, but if you are interested, you are welcome to reach out to me and find out more.

To summarize, I am so happy that I was listened to when I was talking about something I am very passionate and I was able to share my MA research with others at Pearson.

Edited by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12 Sep 2022 around 3pm

Last edited: 12 09 2022