Text: Teach Access

 


*Later I refer to another multidisciplinary subject of social responsibility e.g. online safety. As well as Lewthwaite echoing the multidisciplinary nature of digital accessibility - use to justify co-production methodology.*

In the US the need to educate the next generation in digital accessibility practices has been recognised. Leaders from Yahoo and Facebook officially founded Teach Access. It is a collaboration and multi- disciplinary approach bringing together voices from education, industry, and disability advocacy organisations to address the critical need to enhance students’ understanding of digital accessibility.

Their core aim is to ensure courses in Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, User Experience Research, Design, Web Development, and other related topics include digital accessibility in the curriculum to build the numbers of future developers and designers to fill the digital accessibility skills gap (Teach Access, 2023; Sonka, 2021). No such formal program exists yet in the UK.

This places significance on a multidisciplinary approach to addressing curriculum needs, the needs of industry and disabled users of digital content. 

https://teachaccess.org/resources/fact-sheet-why-teach-accessibility/

https://teachaccess.org/accessibility-skills-gap/ (new report)

https://teachaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2023-Accessibility-Skills-Gap-White-Paper-Final-Tagged.pdf

Our Mission

Bringing together industry, education, and disability advocacy organizations, Teach Access addresses the digital accessibility skills gap by equipping learners to build toward an inclusive world.


This still focuses the educational attention on IT professionals. However their ethos stretches far beyond that and they include the following quote:– Matt May (Adobe)

What we have are a few people who know a lot about Accessibility. What we need are a lot of people to know a little about it.

– Matt May (Adobe)

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