Speaker
Description
I will present an outline of the astronomical outreach activities and resources that we have developed at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Valencia in Spain. Our first attempts to organise activities for special publics made us notice the lack of resources inclusive enough to serve different kinds of persons in the same audience. We embarked then in the development of inclusive resources following the Universal Design for Learning framework with the help of special education educators and put together the project “A Touch of the Universe” (https://astrokit.uv.es), with the goal of sharing these resources. In order to foster the exchange of information in the community, the International Astronomical Union decided to create the Working Group on Astronomy for Equity and Inclusion at the International Astronomical Union. Recently, also the European Astronomical Society has created a similar working group on Inclusion.
Inclusion is, therefore, becoming an important topic in the different astronomical institutions’ agendas because of the many benefits that an inclusive and accessible research environment has in terms of excellence for research, not to mention the benefits at personal level for the researchers themselves.
