the translation project proved to be a work in progress as the semester got underway we got better at how we bound the volumes of content and created title sheets for each separately-bound volume romack said it became a sub-project in developing standards for how we packaged the materials it was artsy and creative and fun the team initially faced logistic challenges when using tractor-fed paper in the braille embosser you have to tear individual sheets from one another plus the tractor-feed strips on either side of the page before you bind it romack explained we had to punch our own holes for binding using a machine that helps us do comb binding but there got to be so much content that the comb binding was inefficient eventually the team started using braille paper that was already punched for three-ring binders we just started putting this massive volume of content in big bulky binders romack said oh the things we learned the braille projects roots extend back to 2018 when texas a&m mathematics worked with the universitys center for teaching excellence to create open educational resources for two foundational math classes as part of the process the faculty focused on identifying and removing barriers ranging from academic to financial to accessibility which students might encounter as a teacher one of the things i find most fulfilling is to help a student find joy in a subject that i love coffelt said because texas a&m requires every student to have six hours of math credit as a minimum its important that as a department were there to support and serve all students at texas a&m because they all need math to ensure that it considered all accessibility issues the department invited romack to join these discussions when we produce course materials with accessibility in mind we know that we could produce it today to be accessible but we need to ensure it is flexible and adaptable to adjust to any accessibility need that may pop up down the road like braille production romack remembers telling the faculty just because we dont have a blind student in the class right now doesnt mean that we wont later for the students on the project team this work experience provided profound lessons on commitment and teamwork i was definitely intimidated by this project at first said sarah huggins 24 who is majoring in psychology with a creative studies minor my main task before the braille book was to answer phones so working with books wasnt really my strong suit initially i spent more than two days working on one chapter at the time it was just me and one of my other coworkers spearheading the project so we really leaned on each other during those frustrating days as more student workers began to assist with the project a powerful sense of collaboration developed working on this project meant that everyone had to communicate about which chapters were completed unfinished or needed to be started said haley jouett 24 a biomedical sciences major from poetry texas this led to a new system in our department in which we created a spreadsheet that included who completed which tasks in different parts of the book overall this allowed us to grow as a team and to build connection huggins agreed that the project helped her understand the power of working with others this experience definitely taught me the importance of leaning on your teammates because you cant do everything on your own the san antonio native said sometimes someone else can do it better than you and thats ok coffelt who met weekly with romack throughout the process was impressed with the aggie teams quality of work and speedy output working with justin and his team was a wonderful experience she said they did amazing work at an amazing speed converted graphs and figured out how to translate the math into something understandable in braille this material is not changing for a couple of years so we are really opening the doors to help multiple students to support aggies with disabilities contact assistant director of development sarah hamilton 22 at shamilton@txamfoundationcom or 979-458-1689 or donate online to the disability resources improvement fund at giveam/disabilityresourcesfund