TO ADD: Coverdale, Lewthwaite and Horton, 2022 - ‘shared endeavour’

 Coverdale, Lewthwaite and Horton (2022b) - shared endeavour paper.

Paper relates to ‘Teaching accessibility in the digital skillset’ and reports on research with 30 expert educators in academia and from the workplace to consider how both sectors can develop relationships, learn from each other and build capacity and generate shared pedagogies for accessibility that will help prepare learners and future professionals for accessible practices.

The is a growing recognition of the importance of collaborations between academia and the workplace so they can both share up to date knowledge, practices, experiences and pedagogies for learning around accessibility. 

There is no formal agreed curriculum and on many computer based courses accessibility is not required for degree accreditation or for professional technological certification. The topic lacks visibility within technology oriented disciplines (and others), instead it is typically covered under other subjects such as ethical issues, which is more of a sub-group or topic of human computer interaction and sometimes web development.

Accessibility is most commonly put into practice in the context of evaluation or repair of existing resources rather than planning as part of the overall design process.

With courses or modules relating to accessibility only being elective rather than mandatory, some students may not choose to study it at all. In the workplace a similar thing is happening where learners or technology professionals may only participate in training due to a condition of employment rather than out of interest to learn about the topic.

Education focuses on sociology-cultural aspects such as how context and environment influence, facilitate and constrain teaching and learning practice and evaluation of all of these constitutes ‘what works’. Education is complex and requires a more sensitised understanding of multiple issues that work together across different contexts and teaching disciplines.

Teaching is often difficult for educators to identify and share with others because it is often ‘hard to know’ and developed by the teachers own experiences, reflective practice and trial and error.

This research is to stimulate a discussion and co-production within a shared community. The expert panel is made up of digital accessibility experts from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, Sweden, UK and the US, all who can help share knowledge and experience to set the cultural tone between teaching in higher education and in the workplace.

Most academic experts hoped their graduates would go onto influence workplace practice, however the panel raised concerns that with not enough accessibility teaching taking place there was a persistent ‘chicken and egg’ situation, with one academic noting that ‘if industry asked for it, then instructors would do it’ # this suggests that this connection or request has not yet been recognised for the education of the next generation of tech professionals - learning is add hock#

The issue is then often compounded by being overlooked in workplace settings, therefore levels of awareness and competency are low to be able to meet accessibility needs and this is where for the next generation their education and academia could help #the add hock nature hasn’t acknowledged the bigger picture in how we prepare learners for the workplace, instead training is a reactive and retrofix#

The consensus view was that more formal education is required, including in schools. One expert highlighted that the challenge is how we teach people accessibility way before they get to becoming developers and designers (P.2).  #students on courses had no prior awareness#

Digital accessibility educators and experts often constitute a small community.

To enable a step change in raising awareness and motivating others we need to make sure these skills are common in many different disciplines, contexts and roles.

Different disciplines and role based cultures in academia and the workplace exist and there is no one size fits all solution that accessibility is valued across these disciplines and curricula. This then limits endeavours to position and teach the topic as a core value at the heart of digital design or development.

Accessibility needs to be embedded throughout entire processes from beginning to end. It’s more of a mindset than a particular technical skill to develop and build on (p.3).

Several academic experts described promoting and teaching accessibility beyond computer sciences, such as social science or humanities disciplines so digital accessibility is modelled throughout an institution and part of the culture.

Accessibility appears to rely on the ‘hero model’ in that it is usually someone who brings it to the table, sees its value and initiates its teaching or inclusion within an organisation. These individuals often champion it single handedly in their teams or organisations. Often these individuals are not formally recognised or rewarded for these expertise and their ‘fight’ to achieve accessibility gains.

Having these individuals or a ‘go-to heroes’ means that embedding or the teaching of accessibility is precarious and potentially unsustainable, even more so when it comes to retention of that person or if they move on, especially when they are the main person engaged in the teaching or driving of the subject - #Ref Keates and Bohman#

In the workplace the situation is found to be similar in that if there is no company wide mandate or strategy to embed accessibility in a consistent way, then responsibility is often delegated to ‘the one go to person…that has to put out fires and these people face the brunt of responsibility (p.3).

For accessibility education to be useful and impactful it needs to be integrated into how technologists are educated, one expert commented ‘it was dissonant for me to teach something like design but not talk about accessibility all’ (p.3).

Integrating it moves away from treating it like a separate little specialist thing. It should not be seen as an optional extra, but built into everything we do digitally.

Accessibility is often confined to being a specialty, but it should be interdisciplinary and included in topics beyond the realm of computing and distributed much more widely across the curriculum.

One participant explained a model that helped learners understand the nature of their responsibility to make digital content inclusive and accessible ‘I make them go and look at the things they have created and discover all of the defects…and recognise…that every single one of those defects has a consequence on somebody’s experience’ (p.3).

Accessibility is cross-role and interdisciplinary, and role based training is a critical part of that.

The conversation around digital accessibility needs to be within a whole organisation to prevent people working in specialist silos and fosters a shared commitment, rather than ‘a little island of someone who’s into accessibility’ or something you do in a specific corner in isolation (p.4).

Experts described developing real-world scenarios and assignment briefs with opportunities for learners to work and collaborate directly with real clients or those from the disability community.

To secure and scale capacity, the topic of accessibility needs to be recognised as a shared endeavour.

Interdisciplinary learning increases levels of empathy for ethical and social issues and helps learners to develop critical skills and abilities to accommodate, synthesise and integrate the needs and diverse perspectives of society which are essential skills needed for professionals in the workplace.