New Enhancements to DreamBox Math by Discovery Education Improves Accessibility for Elementary Students

DreamBox Math by Discovery Education adapts dynamically to the learner, providing personalized instruction within a highly engaging, gamified learning environment. DreamBox Math lessons are available in both English and Spanish, and align to math standards in all states. Along with actionable reporting and tools that empower differentiation for all learners, DreamBox Math offers teachers content-specific professional learning and provides administrators critical insights into student progress. With DreamBox Math, every student is empowered to independently engage in interactive problem solving, so they can develop conceptual understanding, apply a variety of strategies, and gain competence and confidence in mathematical reasoning and skills. 

To surpass compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standards, the DreamBox Math product development team worked with teachers, special education experts, and students with disabilities to develop critical product enhancements that enable all K-5 students to engage with the highly effective program, including: 

• Improved compatibility with assistive technology tools, such as magnification and screen readers.  
• An enhanced screen reader with alternative descriptions that support concept understanding and streamlines problem-solving for students with limited and/or low vision.
• Easy-to-tap, move, and place elements ease interaction and accommodate a variety of devices, physical needs, and learning styles.   
• Intuitive keyboard navigation lets students know where they are on the lesson page and within the manipulative.
• Clear visuals enable students with low vision and color blindness to distinguish selectable foreground elements from the background.  
• All lessons now feature replay instructions, so students can easily refer to the task.  

In addition to these accessibility updates, DreamBox Math’s popular Racecourse lessons — in which students learn to represent equivalent fractions as part of a whole — have been updated. Guided by student and teacher feedback, these improvements make it easier for students to get started and interact with the resource through lesson progression. Among the improvements to the Racecourse lessons are: 

• New, more relatable “Road Trip” context for students that makes tasks clearer.  
• Numbered intervals along the course that streamlines the problem-solving process. 
• Larger visuals and more space to make it easier for all users to place markers along the course. 
• Updated scaffolding to ensure students have support and meaningful feedback as they progress through the lesson.    

"The new enhancements and updates to DreamBox Math make it even easier for students – including those with differing visual, auditory, cognitive, and physical abilities – to access high-quality learning experiences that support increased achievement,” said Melanie Lugo, Senior Director, Product Management at Discovery Education. “But we are not stopping here. We are committed to ensuring every student using DreamBox Math can progress at their own pace, experience joy, and gain confidence on their individual journeys toward mathematical excellence.”