Whiteboard
TeachFORGE.ai
Whiteboard / Accessibility & privacy
Accessibility, identity and privacy
Adjust the board for more learners, keep collaborator names non-identifiable, and use privacy controls that protect teaching — without turning the Whiteboard into a student identity system.
Teach people. Do not harvest identities.
What accessibility, identity and privacy mean here
TeachForge Whiteboard is built for teaching, not for running a school student-information system. Collaborators join with a session display name — which can stay Anonymous or become a nickname or class code — rather than a legal identity record on the board.
Accessibility sits beside that principle: an Accessibility menu for UI scale, canvas zoom, contrast, motion, shortcuts, and image descriptions — with honest limits on freehand canvas content, like other visual whiteboards.
Why this matters in class
Non-identifiable by design intent
Prefer nicknames or codes. Do not treat the board as a place to collect legal student names.
Reasonable adjustments
UI text scale, high contrast, reduce motion, and keyboard shortcuts support more learners and teachers.
Private thinking space
Private notes stay local to you — not broadcast to the room.
No gradebook product
TeachForge refuses LMS/SIS attainment stores on the board. Marking stays educational feedback, not a student record system.
Live sessions can still contain display names and Q&A text. The principle is: do not use TeachForge as student identity infrastructure — keep names non-identifiable by classroom policy and product defaults.
Inside the Accessibility menu
- UI text scale separate from canvas zoom
- Canvas zoom for closer inspection of the board
- High contrast for chrome readability
- Reduce motion when animation distracts
- Keyboard shortcuts and skip-to-canvas
- Alt-on-insert prompts and edit image description
- Announce connection cues for join state
UI chrome targets WCAG 2.1 AA principles. The interactive drawing canvas is visual-first — freehand ink, shapes, and live cursors are not fully screen-reader equivalent. That limit is stated honestly, as with peer whiteboard tools.
How to set the room up accessibly
Open the Accessibility menu
Adjust UI scale, contrast, and motion before the class arrives.
Add image descriptions where they help
Use edit description on important images and inserts.
Prefer structured objects for key content
Text and labelled inserts carry meaning better than ink alone.
Display names and joining
| Control | What it means |
|---|---|
| Default display name | Can be Anonymous; stored locally as a session preference |
| Require name on join | Quest+ classroom option — still a display name, not a school ID feed |
| Anonymous boards | Ownerless boards with creator key; no sharing; time-limited |
| Account full name | May seed a display name for signed-in teachers — collaborators need not use legal names |
Best practice: ask for “Team Blue”, initials, or a class code — never harvest legal names into the board culture.
Privacy controls on the board
- Private notes — local-only drawing layer when enabled; not sent to collaborators
- Live Desk — student camera shared only with the teacher, with consent and privacy copy
- Mark sharing defaults — marks stay hidden on share unless you choose otherwise
- No gradebook / SIS sync — TeachForge does not store class attainment as a student information product