Guest Blog by Rinka Shimizu This past winter quarter, I attended my undergraduate classes remotely like every other student during this pandemic. The only difference was that I was doing it from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Honolulu, Hawaii is where I call home, and this is where I ended up staying while classes remained remote. Like many students navigating these difficult times, I made the decision to stay with family in my hometown and connect to classes from a different time zone. While I missed seeing my friends and studying in the library until the wee hours of

 Guest Blog by Britain Willcock The Capstone experience in my final quarter of the Master’s in Information Design and Strategy program was the perfect culmination of the skills and ideas learned throughout my time at Northwestern. We were challenged to reflect on the various classes and projects completed in the program and develop a Capstone that aligned with our passions while showcasing the various lessons we had learned. Finding the Focus In brainstorming for my project, I realized that there was a consistent theme I had grasped onto throughout the program: the power of information was only as potent as

 Guest blog by Shar Carpenter Web accessibility provides all students the ability to equally access information and contribute to the class in an online environment. The World Wide Web Consortium (2021) defines web accessibility as the inclusive practice of ensuring everyone, including people with disabilities, can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with websites and other online tools thus making it an essential aspect of online learning. In addition, web accessibility best practices embrace and work hand-in-hand with the scientific framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a set of guidelines to ensure learning environments are inclusive, flexible, and reduce learning barriers