TO ADD: Soares Guedes and Landoni (2020)

 Soares Guedes and Landoni (2020) unfortunately the knowledge of what accessibility is and how it can be achieved is still not widespread. Many companies and educational institutions do not deal with the topic of accessibility with rigor in the curriculum and students often don’t learn about it which prevents the knowledge of how to create equal access to all.

Soares Guedes and Landoni (2020) Specifically explored the 12 universities in Switzerland and surveyed professors, researchers and admin to find out who was teaching accessibility and what barriers they’re maybe to teaching it. The study was inspired by Shinohara (2018 - who teaches accessibility). It echoed findings in that there was an absence of clear and discipline specific learning and teaching objectives. Similar to others it found that teaching was mainly in software engineering (Ludi, 2007), technology design courses (Shinohara, 2018), web development (Rosmaita, 2006) and computing (Waller, 2009).

They found challenges due to the perception of accessibility, the state of library services for people with disabilities. Most barriers to teaching the subject were similar to Putnam (??) but there were some differences. There was some disparity between learning techniques such as Switzerland had more of a focus on evaluating and checking for accessibility standards with less focus on design concepts and involving individuals with disabilities. 

Findings regarding lack of time to learn, lack of helpful resources and textbooks was echoed, as well as students lack of awareness prior to starting the course. Similarly in Switzerland the pedagogical approaches were lectures, projects and simulation exercises. An interesting finding to elaborate on was that 80% of staff had used guidelines to deal with physical access, such as room bookings and ramps for wheelchair access, yet only 20% said they had guidelines to deal with technology like screen readers or guidance to make content accessible.

The lack of having accessibility as a topic on the curriculum and professionals admitting they didn’t teach it was 77% in Switzerland compared to 52.5% in the US, yet more than half agreed it should be a topic taught as part of a computer science related course.

A shift is clearly needed across the board to make accessibility a core topic, not just as a desirable but essential. Both policy makers and academia should take a clear stance towards the promotion of accessibility as a core and compulsory subject.



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