A model of an accessibility curriculum in higher education

Zhao Q., Mande V., Conn P., Al-khazraji S., Shinohara K., Ludi S., Huenerfauth M.

With an increasing demand for computing professionals with skills in accessibility, it is important for university faculty to select effective methods for educating computing students about barriers faced by users with disabilities and approaches to improving accessibility. While some prior work had evaluated accessibility educational interventions, many prior studies have consisted of firsthand reports from faculty or short-term evaluations. This paper reports on the results of a systematic evaluation of methods for teaching accessibility from a longitudinal study across 29 sections of a human-computer interaction course (required for students in a computing degree program), as taught by 10 distinct professors, throughout four years, with over 400 students.  A control condition (course without accessibility content) was compared to four intervention conditions: week of lectures on accessibility, team design project requiring some accessibility consideration, interaction with someone with a disability, and collaboration with a team member with a disability. Comparing survey data immediately before and after the course, we found that the Lectures, Projects, and Interaction conditions were effective in increasing students' likelihood to consider people with disabilities on a design scenario, awareness of accessibility barriers, and knowledge of technical approaches for improving accessibility - with students in the Team Member condition having higher scores on the final measure only. However, comparing survey responses from students immediately before the course and from approximately 2 years later, almost no significant gains were observed, suggesting that interventions within a single course are insufficient for producing long-term changes in measures of students’ accessibility learning. This study contributes to empirical knowledge to inform university faculty in selecting effective methods for teaching accessibility, and it motivates further research on how to achieve long-term changes in accessibility knowledge, e.g. by reinforcing accessibility throughout a degree program.

Baker C.M., El-Glaly Y.N., Shinohara K.

Recent interest in accessibility emphasizes including it in computer science curriculum as key to producing effective computing professionals. Despite a general consensus that teaching accessibility in computing curriculum is good, there exist few tools and resources to support instructors in higher education. To better understand the relationship between accessibility in curriculum and research, we conducted a systematic literature review of papers in computing education. We analyzed the papers for the courses accessibility is covered in, the topics that are covered and pedagogies and assessment approaches that are used. Across this body of work, we found a number of key learning objectives commonly covered in computing education research, though it appeared the research did not evenly cover these objectives throughout curricula, nor did the research systematically investigate how learning objectives were integrated. Based on these results, we offer suggestions for future directions of accessibility education research and curriculum building.

El-Glaly Y.N.

This paper describes the development process of a graduate course on accessibility that is offered as an elective for software engineering students. The paper reports on the three iterations of the course evolution as topics and pedagogy are updated from one iteration to the next. The main motivation of the course updates was to cover the educational needs of software engineering students, which are not the same as HCI or design students. Software engineering students learned better and became more engaged with the topic of accessibility when it was tied to programming and development- based activities. The final form of the course was evaluated using a survey, and the results showed that students found the course beneficial to their education and relevant to their career. We discuss the challenges of creating, teaching, and maintaining a course on accessibility, and we offer insights on what research is needed in this area to support accessibility educators.

Kearney-Volpe C., Kletenik D., Sonka K., Sturm D., Hurst A.

University students graduating and entering into technology design and development fields are underprepared to support digital accessibility due to a lack of awareness and training. Teach Access is a consortium of 10 industry partners, 5 advocacy groups, and 20 university partners working to address this issue. In an attempt to bridge the gap between what is taught to students and the increasing demand from industry, the initiative described here was aimed at awarding instructor grants to support the development of accessibility modules in tech-related courses. In our study we surveyed student attitudes toward accessibility pre- and post-instruction of these modules, as well as, instructor strategy. We found that across all courses, student confidence in accessibility-related concepts increased. The largest increases were found in student confidence in defining the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Our work makes the following contributions: 1) A detailed description of how accessibility was integrated into 18 different university and college courses 2) Instructional delivery methods found to be effective by participating instructors 3) Insights for resource materials development.

Ko A.J., Ladner R.E.

Shinohara K., Bennett C.L., Wobbrock J.O.

Despite practices addressing disability in design and advocating user-centered design (UCD) approaches, popular mainstream technologies remain largely inaccessible for people with disabilities. We conducted a design course study investigating how student designers regard disability and explored how designing for both disabled and non-disabled users encouraged students to think about accessibility throughout the design process. Students focused on a design project while learning UCD concepts and techniques, working with people with and without disabilities throughout the project. We found that designing for both disabled and non-disabled users surfaced challenges and tensions in finding solutions to satisfy both groups, influencing students' attitudes toward accessible design. In addressing these tensions, non-functional aspects of accessible design emerged as important complements to functional aspects for users with and without disabilities.

Putnam C., Dahman M., Rose E., Cheng J., Bradford G.

As Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) become more diffuse, developers and designers need to consider a growing diversity of users including people with disabilities and aging populations. As a result, computing education needs to respond by providing students opportunities to learn about accessibility and designing for inclusion. This article presents results of a qualitative research study of practices in teaching accessibility in university-level programs in the US. The study included interviews with 18 professors from some of the top universities in the US and a content analysis of syllabi and other teaching materials. Using the pedagogical theory of authentic learning and elements from the 21st Century Skills framework, we found that instructors emphasized the need for students to develop awareness and understanding for a diversity of ICT users through multiple different experiences; experiences that included research projects that directly involve users with disabilities, guest speakers, field trips, simulating disabilities, and the use of videos/movies. Additionally, instructors used multiple resources (e.g., research papers, online resources), in part, to offset the challenge that there is a perceived lack of a comprehensive textbook. Instructors also emphasized the importance of their individual initiative; that is, the inclusion of accessible topics or courses was often linked to a faculty member's research and/or personal commitment. This article contributes to a gap in the literature by disseminating and sharing different approaches to teaching accessibility across multiple instructors, courses, and campuses.

Keates S.

Designing for Universal Access requires designers to have a good understanding of the full range of users and their capabilities, appropriate datasets, and the most suitable tools and techniques. Education clearly plays an important role in helping designers acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to find the relevant information about the users and then apply it to produce a genuinely inclusive design. This paper presents a reflective analysis of a variant of the “Usability and Accessibility” course for MSc students, developed and delivered by the author over five successive semesters at the IT University of Copenhagen. The aim is to examine whether this course provided an effective and useful method for raising the issues around Universal Access with the designers of the future. This paper examines the results and conclusions from the students over five semesters of this course and provides an overview of the success of the different design and evaluation methods. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effectiveness of each of the specific methods, techniques and tools used in the course, both from design and education perspectives.

Aditomo A., Goodyear P., Bliuc A., Ellis R.A.

Martin-Escalona I., Barcelo-Arroyo F., Zola E.

Together with the trend towards engineering designs more accessible to handicapped people there is an increasing concern at the engineering faculties to include topics related to accessibility in their programs. Engineers must be aware that handicapped people use technology and designs must take into account this fact. This paper explains how a topic on accessibility was started at a technical faculty as a cross topic to five different engineering degrees: Electrical, Electronics and Automatic Control, Industrial Product Design, Electronic Systems and Computer Science. The introduction process is explained along with the teaching methodology. Results after the first two courses are good in general but present some issues. The main issue to be corrected is that students from different branches achieve different academic performances.

Katsanos C., Tselios N., Tsakoumis A., Avouris N.

Many websites remain inaccessible for people with disabilities, despite the availability of relevant guidelines and tools. This is mainly due to lack of appropriate training of Web designers on accessibility technology. In this paper, a project based learning activity designed to instruct Web accessibility guidelines and good design practices is presented. The activity is mediated by a web-based learning environment, which presents real-world examples of accessibility impasses that arise when certain, established guidelines are violated, and then provides advice on how to avoid or resolve them. The learning material contained in the tool is offered through a faceted browsing approach, thus enabling active exploration by the learner. A within-subjects case study compared the learning effectiveness of traditional academic instruction (pre-condition) with the proposed project based activity (post-condition) in the context of a University course. A significant improvement in students’ academic performance and perceived learning was found.

Alonso F., Fuertes J.L., González Á.L., Martínez L.

Version 2.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) was published in December 2008. WCAG 2.0 has a different language, a different structure and a different rationale to WCAG 1.0. All of these influence how to teach web accessibility. In this paper we present an innovative approach that we have followed in a web accessibility module that is taught at the UPM’s School of Computing as part of the BEng degree in Computer Science. Our approach combined several teaching methods: traditional lectures, collaborative learning sessions, a short exercise on web site evaluation and, finally, a short project consisting of the development of an accessible web site. In the paper we describe the methods used and the results.

Gordon N., Brayshaw M.

Carter J.A., Fourney D.W.

This paper describes techniques used in a recent computer science course designed to develop accessibility engineers. It provides sufficient detail for other instructors to replicate the highly successful experience that resulted. It also discuses a number of results of the course that act as indicators of its success.

Freire A.P., de Mattos Fortes R.P., Barroso Paiva D.M., Santos Turine M.A.

This paper discusses an approach for Web accessibility education tacking advantage of short introductory courses. In this approach, screen readers were used toallimmerse students in the problems experienced by blind users while using the Web. Experimental results from an evaluation exercise carried out by students showedallthat the use ofallscreen readers was helpful to better understand and to reinforce the concepts of Web accessibility.

Sharma S., Dureja S., Saini D., Jose R., Pant R., Singh A.

Background Sensory impairments, such as visual impairment, deafblindness, deaf or hard of hearing (DHH), muteness, and Sensory Processing Disorder, present significant challenges for students in higher education. These challenges include difficulties in accessing information, participating in discussions, and adapting to academic environments. Objective This review aims to explore advancements in assistive technology that support sensory-impaired individuals in higher education and identify existing gaps in accessibility, usability, and educator preparedness, aligning with (UNSDG) (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) 4’s goal of inclusive lifelong education by 2030. Methods We conducted a systematic literature review of 68 studies focussing on technological solutions such as assistive devices, adaptive learning platforms, and communication tools designed to enhance accessibility and inclusion in academic settings. Results While various assistive technologies have improved access, disparities in resource availability across institutions persist. Many educators lack adequate training to effectively integrate these technologies, and infrastructure limitations further hinder their use. Conclusions The findings underscore the need for further research to address accessibility gaps and improve educator training. By enhancing the adoption of assistive technologies, higher education institutions can create more inclusive learning environments, ensuring equal opportunities for all students, regardless of sensory impairments.

Crestana G.S., Batista U.D., Funnicelli M.I., Braga L.G., Zuvanov L., Bizarria R., de Sousa R.M., Ferreira P.H., Winck F.V., Margarido G.R., Varani A.D., Riano-Pachon D.M., Santos R.A.

AbstractThe rapid evolution of high-throughput technologies in biosciences has generated diverse and voluminous datasets, requiring bioscientists to develop data manipulation and analysis skills. Python, known for its versatility and powerful libraries, has become a crucial tool for managing these datasets. However, there is a significant lack of programming training for bioscientists in many countries. To address this knowledge gap among scientists in Brazil, the Brazilian Python Workshop for Biological Data was introduced several years ago, focusing on basic programming concepts and data handling techniques using popular Python libraries. Despite the progress and positive feedback from earlier editions, challenges persisted, necessitating continuous adaptation and improvement to meet the evolving needs of bioscientists.This work describes the advancements made in the 2021 and 2022 editions of the workshop and discusses new suggestions for its ongoing enhancement. Key innovations were introduced in the workshop structure and coordination, including the creation of new committees and the establishment of a code of conduct. Feedback forms were updated to enable real-time adjustments during the event, improving its overall effectiveness. The workshop also expanded its reach by increasing geographical diversity among participants. New didactic strategies, such as pair-teaching, code clubs, and the integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs), were implemented to enhance learning outcomes. Programming best practices and scientific reproducibility were emphasized through talks and hands-on activities, guided by PEP8 conventions. Furthermore, efforts to enhance scientific dissemination were intensified, with an increased presence on social media and participation in international scientific events and communication networks. Finally, we present updated recommendations for students, researchers, and educators interested in organizing and promoting similar events, building on those previously described.

Silva P.A., Motti V.G.