TO ADD: Horton, Baker x 2, Zhao
Zhao et at (2020)
Comparison of methods for teaching accessibility in university computing courses
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=comparison+of+methods+for+teaching+accessibility&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1690557650622&u=%23p%3Dh8wWU-0QEr0JMicrosoft’s inclusive design toolkit resources are there to broaden understanding and perspectives around designing for diversity (Microsoft, 2018a - check in Horton paper). They have an inclusive design toolkit which has a broad range of personas that not only represent disabilities needs but also how these needs are common across many people, for example their infographic model shows a person with one arm, an arm injury or someone holding a baby in their arms who all face similar situational barriers, similarly someone who is non-verbal, has laryngitis or a heavy accent all share barriers to speech. Bennet and Roser (2019) explain that these commonalities are there to foster empathy to help connect and understand others needs, but also shows how solutions can scale up to meet a broader spectrum of needs rather than just a perceived minority. Microsoft also have an accessibility training suite of materials and guidance dedicated to disseminating accessible practices.
This infographic was used in a study by (ref) to explore how much learners understood about different disabilities and the situational barriers people face…
Horton (2020, p.2) refers to a presentation by Lauridsen (2020) who describe being an ally in the accessibility space, who said: ‘we don’t wait to put security into a product until we have an empathy exercise where I come and take your wallet so you can see what it feels like to have your money go away, and now you care and so you’ll build security in, But sometimes that’s still how we treat accessibility, like either something fun and inspirational or an aspiration that gets added on. I want part of my job where I kind of have to go and advocate and cheerlead for accessibility to someday not to be necessary’
# The topic of data protection is already on the school curriculum through the online safety aspect of the computing curriculum, yet digital digital accessibility as a social responsibility isn’t.
Horton (2020) producing inaccessible technology is unprofessional and unethical and likely to be a source of discrimination.
Horton (2020) explains that society has heavily relied on technology in high risk contexts where barriers of inaccessible content could lead to harm and health and safety issues. She refers to the covid pandemic and the rapid transition to digital solutions where inaccessible content presented barriers in a range of context such as employment, education, health information, food shopping and communication (Gleason et al, 2020; Rosenbaum et al, 2020). MENTION DEAF COMMUNITY AND CAPTIONS LAW SUIT.
Horton (2020) raises concerns that to avoid future scenarios of people being without vital information and infrastructure we must prepare future technologists with at least the minimum standard of knowledge or those creating digital world solutions and vital services having this as a vital core competence. Accessibility should not just be an optional feature or aspirational goal but should be respected as a legal obligation to those who need it, especially to account for grave situations like a global pandemic.
Dermitiz (2020) posting on a blog for Business Disability Forum, says the solution for accessibility isn’t about fixes, it’s about retracing steps in the process and reassessing the project specifications where the tiniest detail has meant accessibility has gone wrong.
Dermitiz (2020) Media students such as those who make digital content such as films, campaigns, news and public relations or social media content often explore user needs and conduct an audience analysis and this is where students need to be taught about the needs for ensuring and making content accessible.
Dermitiz (2020) in media education unfortunately accessibility is often not a required factor from the exam boards who write the unit specifications and nor is it often implemented in media education by teachers, leaving many media students never being exposed to the principles of digital accessibility. If course specifications don’t list these requirements there is no consequence of not including it, therefore many learners don’t, or don’t know to, yet it needs to be included from inception.
The article ‘Planning, creating and publishing accessible social media campaigns’ was posted by Government Communication Service (ref) that offers tips and pragmatic advice for those in media positions on good accessibility practice such as colour contrast, alt text on images, video content and captions, fonts and graphics which demonstrates that accessibility doesn’t just belong on websites as per the regulations (ref) or just in computer science or software development topics (ref). This Government Communication Service guidance has not yet made its way into the media classroom or educational curriculum.
Business Disability Forum also offer a range of freely available resources for the creation and testing of content.
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) including accessibility in computer science and other related disciplines is extremely important if we wish for the next generation of professionals to be able to create accessible content (p.107).
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) The lack of accessibility in the educational curriculum poses a problem for industry because only 7.2% of web accessibility practitioners surveyed reported learning about it in their formal training (WEBAIM, 2018 - survey of practitioners).
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) Accessibility topics are more likely to be ignored if they were an additional or elective topic, rather than a core component, due to the lack of education and awareness surrounding this topic and lack of resources and support that teachers need to be able to include it.
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) Explore literature on the teaching of accessibility and found the main learning objectives for learning about accessibility were technical knowledge and empathy, with a small amount of papers referring to potential endeavours such as pursuing a career in accessibility.
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) Some findings indicated that some approaches to teaching accessibility such as general disability knowledge, testing and assistive technology could be more conducive pedagogies or teaching strategies that demanded less expertise (p.110). #This suggests that without the in-depth technical knowledge awareness of this topic could be more easily introduced.
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) The most frequently used pedagogies were in-class activities, projects, lectures as well as simulations, videos or interactions with people who have disabilities.
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) Findings correlate to prior research that teaching accessibility is a small and less developed epistemology that lacks pedagogical culture and curricula infrastructure to be able to produce accessibility minded future digital professionals (Lewthwaite and Sloan, 2016; Putman et al, 2016; Shinohara, 2018 - ‘who teaches’).
However, Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) found that in contrast to Lewthwaite and Sloan, 2016) findings indicated that institutions and teachers are learning from one another or they perceive accessibility issues as high priority that does need meeting.
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) Meeting guidelines alone is not enough for understanding or creating accessible content.
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) multiple instructors, especially novice ones, found it difficult to understand tools or accessibility guidelines and feedback suggested that this is a barrier that negatively affects teaching. They explain that this is because many tools require users to be versed in accessibility to be able to use them, and students then in turn many struggle to interpret results to learn and address associated learning materials.
Baker, El-Glaly and Shinohara (2020) Having a good understanding of the best ways to introduce accessibility content will help to create lightweight ways that instructors could include it throughout core and relevant courses. However, literature currently offers little information on how to introduce the topic or create usable accessibility teaching materials to support teachers.
Baker et al (2022) refer to Zhao et al (2020) who found that although students had learnt about accessibility in one of their courses they had forgotten about their accessibility knowledge by the time they were graduating.
Baker et al (2020) we need to design a roadmap for rigorous accessibility education.
Zhao et so (2020) conducted a longitude study throughout four years with over 400 students. Surveys that were conducted before and after the accessibility course showed that learning about accessibility had increased the student’s likelihood to consider people with disabilities when making digital content. However, comparing responses from the pre-course surveys and then from two years later almost no significant gains were observed suggesting that a single intervention is not enough and insufficient for producing long term knowledge and change.
#This indicates that there is a real need to either reinforce knowledge as an ongoing integral theme throughout a programme (ref) or to introduce and embed this knowledge earlier in the educational journey to combat initial lack of awareness (Ref). It also suggests that once taught it needs to remain as a reoccurring and reinforced topic to develop it as a lifelong skill to enact significant change, including reinforcement training in the workplace (Ref). At present accessibility very much sits as a one-off learning opportunity in the higher education journey that is emerging not as effective with sparce coverage.
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