Fifty years ago this week, NASA introduced the first American astronauts. To recognize the event, NASA has created an unusual interactive feature.

The 50th Anniversary Of The Mercury 7 Press Announcement has two elements.

One just shows video of the press conference, and it also includes closed-captioning. That obviously helps English Language Learners, but not nearly as much as the other element.

It also has what it calls an Interactive Press Conference. It, too, has closed captioning, but instead of just listening to people speak, users can click on a menu of the questions asked and just listen to those responses instead of having to listen to the whole thing.

This second feature makes it much more accessible to ELL’s — both for just listening and for other exercises — like having to answer a series of questions developed by an instructor or other students.

Both features are accessed by the main link.

I’m adding it to the Planets and Space section of my website.