The African American Civil War Soldiers is a Zooniverse is a crowd-sourcing transcription project. It is a collaboration between historians, social scientists and the African American Civil War Museum.
The stated goals of the project are to “improve our knowledge of the African Americans who fought for freedom in the American Civil War, to provide descendants of the soldiers with access to information on their ancestors, and to present students of history with primary documents from a pivotal moment in African American history.” To create this database they are using the platform Zooniverse to gather information on an estimated 200,000 soldiers who formed the United States Colored Troops (USCT). The completed database will be placed on African American Civil War Museum website, allowing teachers and students to explore African American history, present them with interactive maps and a searchable database of all the soldiers. The database will help users to identify ancestors who fought in the Civil War.
While not one of their stated goals, by transcribing the scanned, pdf non-accessible images of their records, users are creating accessible documents which can be accessed using assistive technology and by people with disabilities.