Microsoft announces the launch of a new world in Minecraft. BuildAbility will be the first world for Minecraft: Education Edition focused on accessibility and building inclusive spaces. This edition will help students and educators to understand and learn about the many different abilities that shape our world.
Focusing on accessibility and building inclusive spaces, students will start by learning about five types of accessibility barriers: Attitudinal Barriers, Information or Communications Barriers, Organization or Systemic Barriers, Physical Barriers, and Technological Barriers.
Within this new world, students will also be able to explore different community spaces and meet various characters that represent many in our world who are faced with barriers. They will have a deeper understanding of how the barriers challenge those who face them and find ways to design a more inclusive space for others.
On a local level, we learned that Microsoft collaborated with the Peel District School Board in Ontario, Canada, on the development. They've been actively using Minecraft in classroom learning setting.
BuildAbility has the goal of inspiring students to examine their world for the ways it is built with or without accessibility in mind. In BuildAbility, students are invited to explore three distinct areas, a school, a shopping center, and a community corner with a gas station and store. The world also features an open sandbox area allowing educators to present unique build challenges focused on inclusive design. Students can extend their learning into the real world by identifying barriers in their own schools and communities and proposing new ways to build more inclusive spaces.
The new world is accompanied by an Educator Guide to provide guided lessons and resources to support the accessibility barriers.
Microsoft also invites everyone to celebrate Global Accesibility Awareness Day with a BuildAbility Live Lesson on May 19, 2022. The Cobblestone Collective, a Microsoft Global Training Partner, will host live co-taught virtual lessons for classrooms around the world available at three time slots. Register for one here!
More info on this well thought out launch can be found here.