An RNC student’s innovative idea has helped make educational fossil boxes more accessible for visually impaired students across the UK. Izzy Theophanous, who worked at the Hereford and Worcester Earth Heritage Trust (EHT) as part of a work placement, collaborated with Mark Baggott from the Trust to develop a new feature that would allow students to explore the boxes independently.
The Earth Heritage Trust produces fossil boxes for schools, filled with real fossils found in the UK. The boxes include information on the fossils’ types, how old they are and where they were found, as well as resources for learning about fossils and collecting them safely.
Izzy’s role was to help make these boxes more accessible for students with visual impairments. Working with Mark, Izzy came up with the idea of incorporating QR codes into the boxes. These codes can be scanned using a smartphone, leading to digital information that could be read aloud by text-to-speech technology. This feature allows visually impaired students to explore the fossil boxes independently and learn more about the fossils without relying on others.
The Earth Heritage Trust has now implemented Izzy’s idea, and in October, Mark made an announcement on the EHT Facebook page:
‘This weekend I manufactured the 100th school fossil box ready for future distribution to a UK school. Of these, 79 are already with educational establishments across the UK. This batch of three also saw the introduction of the QR codes that we developed with RNC that will enable blind and partially sighted students to be able to scan these codes and have their phones read the text to them.’
This is a great way to make fossil education more accessible for students with visual impairments and to encourage a love of history and science in all children.
If you know a school that would like to order a fossil box, please contact the Hereford and Worcester Earth Heritage Trust here.