Activities from LO OBS doc

ACTIVITIES: 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. (Putnam et al, 2016)

HOW TEACH-ACTIVITIES: We first considered the pedagogical theory of “authentic learning” because, as others have noted, it is particularly well suited for computing education [Shaffer and Resnick 1999]. From a meta-analysis of literature on authentic learning, Shaffer and Resnick identified four interdependent and mutually supporting aspects of pedagogy that they defined as effective “thick” authentic learning. Authentic learning instruction should emphasize (1) means to cultivate personal meaning for students; (2) relationships to the real world outside school; (3) means of assessment that reflect the learning process; and (4) opportunities for students to think about the topic(s) in multiple ways. (Putnam et al, 2016)

HOW TEACH-ACTIVITIES: The first two points are interrelated in that both are concerned with teaching content that reflects “real-world” contexts and subjects. The measure of “personally meaningful” is based on student perception of learning activities as being “real” or “work they can honour.” To the second point, to help cultivate student meaning, it is important to include real-world activities that generalize outside of school. (Putnam et al, 2016)

HOW TEACH-ACTIVITIES WHAT WORKS: In the study, project partners within the EDaAN were contacted through e-mail to provide information about how accessibility-related training and teaching was being addressed [Keith et al. 2009; Keith and Whitney 2008]. The authors gathered information about 50 courses from 35 course providers that addressed accessibility in some way; courses were designed for a mix of vocational, professional, and university-level (undergrad and graduate) programs. They found that two activities were reported as having the most impact on students—both were those from authentic learning concepts: (1) engaging students in practical real-world applications (e.g., designing an accessible website); and (2) making the concepts personally meaningful for students through demonstrations of ICT use by people with disabilities through invited talks or videos. (Putnam et al, 2016)

VIDEO RESOURCES: A common theme in papers in this subcategory was the importance of including videos and/or direct interaction with users with disabilities. In alignment with authentic learning, these activities were aimed at making the subject matter meaningful to students and providing real-world experience. In an example, Kurniawan et al. [2010] described a general education undergraduate course they created and taught. The course was somewhat unique in the related literature, because it was not aimed at computing-related majors. The general audience forced the authors to use a variety of approaches that were understandable and relatable to a wide range of students; their approaches included videos and direct interaction with end users. (Putnam et al, 2016)

VIDEO RESOURCES: Related, Carmichael et al. [2007] described instructional videos they created that portrayed the use of technology by older adults. They found through a questionnaire that the videos had a significant impact on raising awareness of the need to consider people who are elderly in the design of ICTs. (Putnam et al, 2016)

DIRECT INTERACTION: Ludi [2007] also discussed the importance of direct interaction with end users who have disabilities. Ludi found that the resulting project from the latter student group who interacted with those who had disabilities did a better job integrating accessibility features compared to the student groups who did not have an external stakeholder with disabilities. (Putnam et al, 2016)

HOW TEACH: Harrison [2005] describes including screen-reader technology in a web design course at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. In a good example of making topics personally meaningful for students, she included labs in which the students had to try to interact with web sites using a screen reader. This was followed by a screen-reader demonstration by speakers who were blind. (Putnam et al, 2016)

HOW TEACH DIRECT INTERACTION: Several authors discussed ways to make topics personally meaningful for students through activities that include videos [e.g., Wang 2012], labs [e.g., Harrison 2005], and direct interaction with people who have disabilities [e.g., Ludi 2007]. Additionally, it was common for instructors to assign projects that required student and/or client collaboration that provided a means for students to experience accessibility topics in real-world environments outside of school [e.g., Lazar 2011]. (Putnam et al, 2016)

HOW TEACH: Instructors are currently developing meaningful learning experiences through various activities including research projects that directly involve users with disabilities, guest speakers, field trips, simulating disabilities, and using videos/movies. Additionally, instructors are using multiple resources (e.g., research papers, online resources), in part to offset the perceived lack of a comprehensive textbook. (Putnam et al, 2016)

Classes consisted of a traditional lecture format, followed by in-class activities where students used the techniques they learned. Lab sections were held once a week, during which students applied the week’s concepts and techniques toward their project. Concepts were introduced successively such that students added to their projects as the course progressed. Expert users attended lab sections, allowing students to practice their design skills with and without expert users. (Shinohara et al, 2017)

ACTIVITIES The use of screen readers, alt text, colour contrast, and different font size are a few examples of what can be improved, making it easier to see, concentrate, and hear the content (Soares Guedes and Landoni, 2020)

ACTIVITIES When looking at methods for teaching accessibility, there are not many contributions in literature (Soares Guedes and Landoni, 2020).

ACTIVITIES We identified four common categories of the beneficiaries of actions, people who: (1) are blind, low vision, colorblind, (2) are deaf and hard-of-hearing, (3) have mobility impairments, and (4) have cognitive disabilities. (Putnam, Rose and Macdonald, 2023).

ACTIVITIES EMPATHY Among our interviewees, another somewhat common approach to considering accessibility was to have employees participating in training using simulation labs. Simulation labs have been criticized as ineffective in previous work [14, 33, 48], because a simulation does not accurately replicate the experience of a disability. (Putnam, Rose and Macdonald, 2023).

ACTIVITIES: The importance of understanding how devices work together with assistive technology (AT), such as screen reader programs and speech-to-text software, has been highlighted in several studies (Gilligan 2020; Kimball et al. 2016). Five out of the 16 papers in this review incorporated the topic of AT into their training programs (Kontio and Radtke 2019; Pearson 2003; Pearson and Koppi 2003; Heap and Thompson2018; Park, Roberts, and Stodden 2012). Several of them used practical exercises such as hands-on exercises with AT, video captioning, and remediation of digital materials and have exerted considerable impact. (Bong and Chen, 2020)

ACTIVITIES Principle 1: Perceivable Four guidelines are covered under this principle, and eight success criteria on level A (5 participants), AA (2) and AAA (1), of 22 success criteria in total, were exemplified by 10 participants. The most frequent examples are related to alternative text (4), contrast and zoom (3), and captions and sensory characteristics (2): (Sanderson, Kessel and Chen, 2022)

ACTIVITIES Principle 2: Operable Two of four guidelines under this principle are covered, and two success criteria on level A, of a total of 20 success criteria on level A, AA and AAA, are exemplified by four participants. The example below applies to keyboard accessibility and simple navigation. (Sanderson, Kessel and Chen, 2022)

ACTIVITIES Making digital learning material accessible requires practical knowledge, such as using heading styles to structure documents, providing captions for videos and providing text descriptions for images. (Sanderson, Kessel and Chen, 2022)

Mastery experiences were highlighted as pivotal, with participants engaging in hands-on activities such as creating alternative text for images and structuring documents for screen readers. These practical exercises provided direct, impactful learning opportunities, leading to a tangible increase in confidence. “Handling the tools and materials myself removed a lot of the intimidation around digital accessibility,” shared Keira, reflecting that practical engagement deepens understanding and skill. This faculty perspective aligns with research advocating for professional development that includes learning cycles and just-in-time resources to foster mastery (Bong & Chen, 2021; Mancilla & Frey, 2021b; ODowd, 2024).

The study also highlights the importance of designing professional development programs that incorporate various experiences to enhance faculty confidence in incorporating digital accessibility standards into their online courses. Participants in this study emphasized the significance of application-based activities that reinforce the practical implementation of accessibility standards. The work of Heap and Thompson (2018) supports these findings, which underscore the importance of hands-on practice in captioning videos and remediating Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files to aid faculty in confidently integrating digital accessibility. Implementing these practices can cultivate an environment conducive to faculty members feeling confident integrating these standards into their courses. Creating comprehensive and directly applicable training programs that offer various experiential learning opportunities to enhance faculty’s digital accessibility self-efficacy provides significant benefits in promoting accessible online courses (ODowd, 2024).

Training activities that provide faculty with opportunities for practice application ensure that faculty can apply the concepts they learn to improve the accessible design of their online courses. (ODowd, 2024).

According to the feedback, interactive presentations, hands-on activities, and opportunities for practical application were perceived by the faculty as being particularly effective in improving their capacity to apply digital accessibility standards. (ODowd, 2024).

ACTIVITIES In addition to presentations, simulation devices such as eyeglasses for different visual impairments and gloves for muscle stiffness and lack of touch sensitivity are used for participants to simulate digital barriers people with disabilities face. Different scenarios are designed for participants to experience temporary disability such as sitting on a noisy and moving bus when trying to watch a lecture video or write a message on mobile phones. When demonstrating how to create accessible digital learning materials, the analysis of the sentin materials is used as basis for addressing the common mistakes. Hands-on excises are assigned for participants to practice what they have learned. (Chen, 2022)

ACTIVITIES For other competence areas the WCAG principles, [28] could form the basis of extending the competences to embrace Digital Accessibility. For example, the Content Creation competence of the Facilitating Learners Digital Competence Area. The following table summarises possible extensions to the DigCompEdu framework to include Digital Accessibility. (Gilligan 2020)

However, activities such as simulations and games, once created, can be easily used even by instructors with fewer resources. (Kletenik, and Adler, 2024)

ACTIVITIES Accessibility design knowledge - Another example of a practical question is asking students to find accessibility issues in a website [13], or examining student projects for inclusive design [21, 29, 48]. A major advantage of design questions over self-reported knowledge questions is that they can more genuinely capture student knowledge. (Kletenik, and Adler, 2024)

ACTIVITIES Attitudes and Awareness: Many evaluations include an assessment of student attitudes towards people with disabilities; for example, the Interaction with Disabled Person (IDP) Scale, which measures positive and negative emotions felt when interacting with a person with disabilities [16]. The IDP scale has been used in assessing accessibility initiatives [9, 17, 29], especially those that include interactions with people with disabilities, such as project stakeholders or team members with disabilities. Other evaluations of student attitudes and awareness that do not use the IDP are used by [12, 20, 21, 34]. (Kletenik, and Adler, 2024)

In this study, we found that playing simulation games increased student levels of empathy and ability to give examples of accessibility accommodations for the disabilities portrayed in the simulation. (Kletenik, and Adler, 2024)

ACTIVITIES This result is important because empathy-building activities can be time-consuming and difficult to implement in the classroom. This result suggests that it may be sufficient to include such activities only for a few disabilities. Instructors can then separately educate about how to design accessibly for the other disabilities using lectures, readings or assignments to increase student knowledge. (Kletenik, and Adler, 2024)

ACTIVITIES: Abstract: While more universities are including IT accessibility in their computer science programs for undergraduate and graduate students, there is little accessibility training available for K-12 teachers. We created an intervention through which postsecondary students had opportunities to experience five computer games with a simulated impairment (colour-blindness, auditory impairments, physical disabilities, blindness, or low vision); first they played the game that was inaccessibly designed and then they played a version that was accessibly designed. The activity ended with a discussion of accessible design techniques. We tested the intervention with 18 teachers who were students in a university web development course that was part of their computer science training. Results show that teachers were very receptive to including accessibility topics in their future classrooms and thought the intervention was an effective method for teaching high school, middle school, and elementary school (Kletenik, and Adler, 2023)

IMPACT ACTIVITIES: SCREEN READERS: One particularly impactful activity that was used early in each of the courses, was the introduction to screen readers, giving learners an opportunity to experience barriers firsthand (Ashton, 2018). For many it was their first time using the technology and encountering barriers in web content, often producing an “ah ha!” moment when they suddenly take the abstract concept of accessibility and turn it into personal experience. The discussions that occurred around the activity produced statements like “I had no idea!” or “that was eye opening.” For many, the activity changed the way they think about accessibility. (Gay, 2023).

IMPACT ACTIVITIES: LINKS: Other such impactful activities include the meaningful link scan. Learners are given two identical web pages, the only difference being one with “click here” links, and the other with meaningful links that describe the links’ destinations. While timing themselves searching the site for a particular link, inevitably learners discover it takes much longer to find the right link on the “click here” version of the site, having to read through the surrounding text to find the link. While meaningless links are considered a barrier for many people with disabilities, learners come to realise they are also a barrier for able people as well, promoting the idea that accessibility improves usability in general for everyone (W3C., 2022a). (Gay, 2023).

Throughout the course a variety of hands-on mini activities add an experiential component to their learning, helping them understand from a practical perspective what accessibility and inaccessibility look like. (Gay, 2023).

Experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) proposes that an effective way to learn is through hands-on activities allowing students to actively engage with new concepts and ideas.

Providing students the opportunity to engage in hands-on activities related to accessibility enables them to connect with the material more concretely and to reflect on the relevance of what they are learning, while also understanding the importance of empathy and inclusion. Experiential learning activities have been included in multiple courses that included accessibility (Mankoff, 2006; Carter and Fourney, 2007; Freire et al., 2007; El-Glaly, 2020). (Weeden, 2023).

Problem-based learning involves giving students complex, real-world problems to solve, encouraging them to apply their knowledge and skills to find solutions, and building on the idea that students learn best when they are presented with authentic, challenging problems that require them to think critically and creatively to find solutions (Barrows and Tamblyn, 1980). By giving students challenges related to accessibility, students can extend their learning to practical, real-world situations, allowing them to develop practical skills that can be used in their future careers and see the importance of accessibility in their chosen fields. Problem based learning activities have been used to cover accessibility in several courses (Liffick, 2004; Mankoff, 2006; Carter and Fourney, 2007; Rosmaita, 2007; Waller et al., 2009; Martin-Escalona et al., 2013; Zhao et al., 2020). (Weeden, 2023).

Caption a video—A series of activities scaffolds learning cumulating in a project where students independently caption a video. Class demonstrations show the options available to generate a transcript of the audio content of a video. Students first caption a short video, then after receiving feedback, caption a longer video for their project. These activities reinforce the importance of captioning and offer repeated practice creating appropriate captions. (Weeden, 2023).

Composing alternative text for images—A series of activities scaffolds the learning of composing appropriate alternative text for images. First, students are given a series of images to determine if the alternative text is sufficient. If the alternative text is not sufficient, they must cite why and compose appropriate alternative text. The class discusses and reviews the solution. The instructor also provides feedback to each student. Students then complete a project where they each find six images that do not have appropriate alternative text. For each image, the student explains why the alternative text implementation is not sufficient and composes appropriate alternative text. These activities emphasize the importance of appropriate alternative text through repeated practice. (Weeden, 2023).

Conducting an accessibility evaluation—A series of activities scaffolds the learning of conducting an accessibility evaluation of a webpage cumulating in students independently performing an accessibility evaluation of a given webpage based on Level AAA of the current version of the WCAG (World Wide Web Consortium, 2018). Completing the assessment involves using screen readers and other technologies and tools to evaluate the accessibility of the page. (Weeden, 2023).

Students document their findings and make recommendations to fix accessibility issues. As preparation for this cumulating experience, an accessibility evaluation is started together in class. Students complete that evaluation across two assignments, with each assignment reviewed and discussed in class. Through these activities, students gain a deeper understanding of how to design for accessibility, as well as how to identify and address issues of accessibility in digital content. (Weeden, 2023).

Accessibility needs through ages:Accessibility through the lifespan course - Students examine the accessibility needs and challenges faced by children and young adults in educational contexts and identify effective design strategies for promoting accessibility. They also learn about laws and regulations that govern accessibility in educational contexts, including the provision of AT and the accessibility of instructional technology and materials. (Weeden, 2023).

ACTIVITIES: Six of the eight units had a “hands-on exercise” that gave participants the opportunity to put their learning into practice, followed by reflection on their experiences in a discussion forum. (Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

Accessibility TOOLKIT- Throughout the course, participants assembled a “toolkit” made up of various resources and tools they might use during their accessibility auditing and development activities. Examples include the WCAG 2.0 specification, AChecker and WAVE automated accessibility checkers, colour contrast, readability, and markup validation testers, and others. By the end of the course, participants will have gathered all the tools they need to effectively audit web accessibility. (Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

ACTIVITIES: WCAG Scavenger Hunt - After being introduced to WCAG and the “10 Key Guidelines”, participants were given a series of potential barriers, for which they needed to identify the relevant WCAG guideline, then find at least one solution to correct the issue through the Techniques documents accompanying WCAG. In a game scenario, participants post their findings to a course discussion forum for peer feedback, and compare their results with those of their classmates. (Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

RESOURCES AND COURSE CONTENT: To support the activities and engagement described above, a number of resourceswere developed to add to the authenticity of the activities and provide multiple ways of interacting with the content of the course. (Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

ACTIVITIES: Showcase website was created to compare examples of good and bad design from an accessibility perspective. Learners were able to access the site with the screen reader they were learning to use to experience barriers firsthand, then experience the same content created to be accessible, developing a practical understanding of accessibility. (Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

The site introduced a wide range of demos and code examples, and a number of packaged JavaScript libraries that could be used to implement. (Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

COURSE CONTENT AND ACTIVITIES: A variety of downloadable documents were provided including the “10 Key Guidelines” reference that summarized the more commonly used WCAG guidelines. Scaffolded with a template for user-tester intake interviews, user-tester observation checklist, a formal accessibility audit template, and an example of a formal accessibility review, among others. (Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

A third, and perhaps the single most effective element of the course, was the collection of tools participants gathered and learned to use, assembled as their “Web Accessibility Auditing Toolkit.” Many had commented that this was their key takeaway from the course. (Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

The 10 key guidelines PDF for reference:

10 Key Guidelines (torontomu.ca)

·       Alt text

·       Captions

·       Headings and lists

·       Table headers

·       Reading order

·       Colour contrast

·       Keyboard accessibility

·       Skip to content

·       Link purpose – descriptive links

·       Error identification

·       Labels and instructions

(Gay, Djafarova and Zefi, 2017) 

ACTIVITIES In this program, undergraduate students travel to Silicon Valley for a week to visit companies, such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Intuit, LinkedIn, Verizon Media, and Wal-Mart eCommerce. (Sonka, McArdle and Potts 2021).

BARRIERS ACTIVITIES LEARNING OBJECTIVES Putnam et al. conducted interviews with 18 instructors who teach accessibility. The interviews revealed common themes, such as the importance of teaching students to design for diverse audiences. The need to increase student empathy for people with disabilities was stressed, in particular through the use of simulations or interactions with people with disabilities, videos, field trips, or collaborative projects. Challenges reported included a lack of awareness of the importance of accessibility, lack of appropriate textbooks, and the difficulty of engaging students [33], [34]. (Kearney-Volpe et al, 2019)

WCAG COMPLEX There was some frustration on the part of instructors with the number of resources and technical density. (Kearney-Volpe et al, 2019)

ACTIVITIES EXPERIENCIAL Although lectures and in-class activities were the most predominant instructional delivery methods used, instructors did not always consider them to be the most effective Instead, instructors felt that experiential learning opportunities had the most impact. They reported using activities such as screen reader demos, service learning, field trips, videos, and guest lectures. (Kearney-Volpe et al, 2019)

RESOURCES NO EVIDENCE OF WHAT WORKS There is great opportunity to enhance the resource materials that instructors and students draw on in teaching and learning about accessibility. There are many resources available, but little evidence to support which are optimal. (Kearney-Volpe et al, 2019)

WGAG COMPLEX Many instructors were unsurprisingly put off by WCAG. This dense technical document is ironically, inaccessible for many beginners interested in learning about accessibility, and requires prior knowledge to navigate effectively. (Kearney-Volpe et al, 2019).

REAL WORLD Students should also understand the importance of accessible web design from a business perspective. (Whitney 2020)

INTEGRATED An appropriate application of this approach is to include accessibility guidelines (e.g. WCAG) during lectures and assignments for any given topic that directly relates to accessible design. By doing so, the connection between classroom concepts and accessibility practices can be strengthened. (Whitney 2020)

One approach is to connect learners with professionals, accessibility communities and activities that cross professional roles (e.g., [8], [29]). Other approaches include creating experiential opportunities that can replicate industry practices and real-world professional dynamics. (Coverdale, Lewthwaite and Horton, 2022).

It appeared that the nature of the activities which required participants to collaboratively explore, experiment with and experience software, checking tools and assistive technologies, as well as investigate more theoretical aspects and apply them to their own situations provided a motivating, realistic and contextualised learning environment (Grabinger and Dunlap, 2002). (Pearson and Koppi 2003)

It appears that the combination of videos demonstrating the use of assistive technology (produced in house with Darren Fittler, a UNSW student who is blind), extensive, relevant and current links to resources, and practical activities combined to make a successful environment. (Pearson and Koppi 2003)

Hands on experience of assistive technologies and checking tools is especially valuable in raising awareness of accessibility issues. Also, more hands-on practice with these technologies during the activities would improve the experience for all the participants. (Pearson and Koppi 2003)

The study also aims to study students’ decisions on accessible design by having them evaluate applications that they commonly use. (Angelopoulou et al, 2023)

ACTIVITIES The lectures for all delivery modes included the same accessibility content: presentations of accessibility-related definitions, tools, and applications; videos of people with disabilities interacting with technology; and hands-on programming activities. For more information about the materials and content taught in the course, readers can refer to the project website (Angelopoulou, 2020a) and/or the related LibGuide (Angelopoulou, 2020b). (Angelopoulou et al, 2023)

Students’ confidence in giving examples of universal design and accessible technologies, defining the purpose of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and explaining the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) significantly increased after the introduction of accessibility-related activities. (Angelopoulou et al, 2023)

EMPATHY LAB The labs are designed to educate and create awareness of accessibility needs in computing. The labs enable easy classroom integration by providing instructors with complete educational materials including lecture slides, activities, and quizzes. The labs are hosted on our servers and require only a browser to be utilized. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

EMPATHY LAB we conducted a study involving 276 students in ten sections of an introductory computing course. Our findings include: (I) The demonstrated potential of the proposed experiential learning format and labs are effective in motivating and educating students about the importance of accessibility (II) The labs are effective in informing students about foundational accessibility topics (III) Empathy-creating material is demonstrated to be a beneficial component in computing accessibility education. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

EMPATHY LAB ACTIVITIES To fill the current void in accessibility education, we created a comprehensive collection of laboratory activities to benefit accessibility education. These labs are collectively referred to as the Accessibility Learning Labs (ALL) and have the primary goals of creating student awareness of the need to create accessible software and to inform students about foundational accessibility concepts. No special software is required to use any portion of the labs since they are web-based and hosted on our servers, requiring only a browser and an internet connection for usage. The labs are easily integrated into existing introductory computing courses such as Computer Science I & II (CS1 & CS2) due to their easy-to-adopt, self-contained nature. Each lab has a designated difficulty rating (Introductory, Medium, Advanced) to maximize impact regardless of course levels, specialization and student experience. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES  Each lab addresses at least one foundational computing accessibility topic and contains: I) Relevant background information on the examined topic, II) An example application containing the accessibility problem, III) A process to emulate the accessibility problem (as closely as possible), IV) Details about how to repair the problem from a technical perspective, and V) Information from people about how this encountered accessibility issue has impacted their life. As an example, the colour blindness (deuteranope) lab includes information about the condition, an on-screen simulation, a way to solve the issue, and a video where a user with this condition discusses how inaccessible apps have impacted their computing experiences. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

EMPATHY To demonstrate the effectiveness of our labs and their experiential learning format, we evaluated them in ten sections of CS2 that included a total of 276 students and found that: (I) The demonstrated potential of the proposed experiential learning format and labs are effective in motivating students about the importance of accessibility, (II) The proposed material is effective in informing students about foundational accessibility topics, and (III) Empathy creating material is demonstrated to be a beneficial component in accessibility education, supporting students in placing a higher value on the importance of creating accessible software. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

EMPATHY ACTIVITIES Instructors and students will only require very basic programming/computing skills to utilize the labs: It is imperative for people with all levels of software development abilities to recognize the importance of creating accessible software. Therefore, the labs do not require any substantial special technical skills or knowledge of any specific programming language. This supports the inclusion of the labs into introductory computing courses that utilize a wide range of tools and technologies. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES The labs should fit into already crowded foundational computing courses: Each lab is designed to take approximately 20-60 minutes, and the instructor may select the lab components that they would like to utilize in an à-la-carte fashion inside or outside of the classroom. The succinctness of the labs will enable them to fit into courses that are already heavily time constrained. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES The labs should include all instructional content: Each lab should represent a complete educational experience for the student. To support this, labs contain all necessary material required for classroom inclusion. This includes lecture slides, background reading material on the accessibility issue, and how it can be repaired from a technical perspective. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES Background Instructional Material: Each lab contains instructional material in several formats. This includes a brief written description (2-4 minutes of reading), lecture slides (.pptx and .pdf format) and background material on the addressed accessibility topic. An Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) [5]-compliant screencast of the lecture slides is available if the instructor would prefer to show the video in class or have the students view the video outside of the classroom. The lecture slides and videos are designed to take approximately 3-5 minutes. The objective is to provide the instructor all necessary materials to include the topic of accessibility in their course and also enable the instructor flexibility to alter any of the material as they see fit. The instructor may also choose to use the material in an à-la-carte fashion if they desire. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES Students experience accessibility challenges through an emulation feature: Each lab contains a feature to emulate the addressed accessibility topic as closely as possible. For example, in Lab #3 (blindness), the text is blurred to emulate what a user with a visual impairment would experience. The objective is to demonstrate adverse impacts first-hand. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES Details are provided on how to repair the application: Students are next provided best practices to repair the encountered accessibility issue. This fix varies by lab and may include using specific colours to make the application more accessible to colourblind users, or properly incorporating ‘alt’ tags for users with screen readers. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES Students repair the accessibility problem: As shown in Figure 1, students repair the accessibility problem. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

EMPATHY ACTIVITIES: Empathy-Creating Supplementary Material: Providing students the proper technical knowledge necessary to create accessible software is important, but demonstrating the importance of creating accessible software is paramount for motivating students to learn about creating accessible software [52, 58, 59]. Supporting this, each lab contains supplementary awareness creating materials such as discussions by people with the addressed accessibility issue. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

Our self-contained labs represent the first experiential educational accessibility material that is publicly available, contains all necessary material for complete classroom adoption, and is web-hosted to enable easy adoption. Our five created labs are publicly available on our project website. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

EMPATHY ACTIVITIES An example in the empathy-creating component is a person who is Deaf/Hard of Hearing using transcribed American Sign Language (ASL) to discuss the negative impact of attempting to use software that relies upon audio cues, rendering it inaccessible for users similar to them (Lab #1). (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES We believe that students completing the labs will better identify with accessibility challenges encountered by users of their peer age group. This material will be provided in both written and video format through the project website. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES For each lab, adopting instructors may request access to a brief quiz (approximately 10 questions) intended to assist them with student summative evaluations. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES Each lab is focused on defined learning objectives (Bloom’s Taxonomy) [13] and is targeted for students in one of three proficiency levels (I) Introductory: Little proficiency in computing, (II) Intermediate: Basic computing proficiency, consistent with foundational computing courses, or (III) Advanced: Medium to high computing proficiency, consistent with upper-level computing courses. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES Using visual cues to make software accessible to Deaf/Hard of Hearing users (Introductory): This lab serves to introduce the concept of making software accessible to users who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing. This lab involves students playing a game where they are tasked with locating a random, hidden item. Points are awarded for finding the item quickly. An audio cue randomly provides the location of the hidden item, thus enabling the user to identify it sooner with more accuracy and achieve a higher score. The accessibility emulation component involves merely not playing the audio cue, emulating the experience of a person who is Deaf/Hard of Hearing. To make the software more accessible, the student adds a visual cue for the hint, thus making the software more accessible to Deaf/Hard of Hearing users. An example of this feature is shown in Figure 1a and Figure 1c. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

Learning Objectives (LO) - After completion of the lab, students should be able to: LO1: Recognize difficulties Deaf/Hard of Hearing individuals may encounter when using inaccessible software (Comprehension) LO2: Examine accessibility solutions specific to Deaf/Hard of Hearing challenges (Analysis) LO3: Construct a more Deaf/Hard of Hearing accessible version of an existing application (Synthesis). (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES Lab 2 - Making software accessible to users who are colourblind (Introductory): The primary learning objective of this lab is to inform students about the Distinguishable Content accessibility guideline [4]. This lab introduces the concept of making software accessible to users who are colourblind. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

[4] 2008. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

Learning Objectives (LO) - After completion of the lab, students should be able to: LO1: Recognize difficulties that colourblind (Deuteranope) individuals may encounter when using inaccessible software (Comprehension) LO2: Examine accessibility solutions specific to colour-blindness related challenges (Analysis) LO3: Construct a more colourblind accessible version of an existing application (Synthesis). (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES  Lab 3 - Making software accessible to blind users (Medium): This lab focuses on demonstrating the importance of creating software that is accessible to users who are blind and the foundational practices that may be incorporated to make the software accessible to these users. This activity contains two primary stages. This first stage involves students interacting with a page and clicking on images of a specific type of animal (e.g., cats), which will be a trivial task for seeing students. The next step has the student install a screen-reader add-on (ChromeVox [2]) and then perform the same task with an inaccessible version of the page. However, this time the page has a dark box hiding the images on the screen and, since the page is not accessible, the audio information provided by the screen reader provides no value. Because the images do not contain properly informative alt tags [12, 55], they don’t contain useful information for the screen reader. The ‘repair’ component of the activity involves students adding informative alt tags to each of the images, thus making the page accessible to blind users who rely on screen readers. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES  Using knowledge gained from the provided accessibility material and lectures, students are shown a page with several features that are inaccessible to users with visual impairments, with some examples being poor contrast, poorly labelled hyperlinks, images for text and poorly structured headings [1, 3, 6]. Students are tasked with identifying these inaccessible components and repairing them. We believe that the ability to identify inaccessible components of a web page is an important skill for students to gain experience in, especially for when they are developing new software and modifying legacy applications in the real-world. Learning Objectives (LO) - After completion of the lab, students should be able to: LO1: Recognize difficulties that blind individuals may encounter when using inaccessible software (Comprehension) LO2: ACTIVITIES  Examine accessibility solutions specific to blindness-related challenges (Analysis) LO3: Construct a more accessible version of an existing application for blind users (Synthesis). (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES An additional section has the student complete an ‘account creation’ form using only their keyboard. Forcing the student to only use a keyboard will closely emulate the experiences of a user who is unable to use a mouse. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES  This lab will make students aware of the accessibility guidelines for users with cognitive Impairment [34, 53, 64]. Some of the cognitive accessibility problems addressed in this lab include too many objects displayed at the same time, lack of logic (consistent actions lead to inconsistent results), small text and rows containing too much text. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES Some of the covered best practices include minimizing cognitive load, limiting the number of typefaces in the document, and providing regular feedback to users. In this activity, students are provided with a set of pages that are inaccessible to users with cognitive impairment. The students are tasked with identifying and repairing the accessibility problems with these pages. Learning Objectives (LO) - After completion of the lab, students should be able to: LO1: Recognize difficulties that users with cognitive disabilities may encounter when using inaccessible software (Comprehension) LO2: Examine accessibility solutions specific to cognitive-related challenges (Analysis) LO3: Construct a more accessible version of an existing application for users with cognitive disabilities (Synthesis). (El-Glaly et al 2020)

ACTIVITIES  Organised into the four categories of disability - Visual cues hard of hearing, colourblind, blind, dexterity, cognitive (El-Glaly et al 2020).

ACTIVITIES Students were asked to complete a ten-question quiz at the conclusion of the activity. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

EMPATHY BENEFITS Our findings demonstrate that Group C is more consistent at improving student motivation while being less likely to reduce it when compared to Group A. The impact of Group C on student motivation is also more consistent than Group A. This indicates that our material is more effective in not dissuading student motivation on the topic of computing accessibility. This characteristic of not discouraging student motivation regarding the topic of accessibility is crucial. Material should motivate initially uninterested students regarding creating accessible software, but equally as important, not decrease an already interested student’s motivation in this topic. We found that Group C’s empathy-creating material can have an overall positive impact on student motivation. This not only demonstrates the importance and benefits of empathy-creating material in computing accessibility education, but its likely benefits in accessibility education in general. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

RESOURCES ACTIVITIES There are also accessibility teaching materials available online. For example, the ‘Teach Access Tutorial’ provides developers and designers with a set of lessons and exercises that teach basic accessible web development practices [69]. Additional teaching resources are compiled by AccessComputing[11], which is an alliance that supports students with disabilities learn computing. AccessComputing focuses on making computing courses accessible to students with disabilities, and also on supporting instructors teaching about accessibility. For example, AccessComputing shares curriculum resources e.g., educational components that teach students and developers how to create accessible mobile applications [24]. To our knowledge, no existing material provides a complete educational experience (experiential activity, lecture slides, etc.) that have been evaluated to demonstrate their educational effectiveness as we have done with our Accessibility Learning Labs. (El-Glaly et al 2020)

EMPATHY EXPERIENCIAL Our labs adhere to experiential learning principles, which have been shown to be beneficial to computing education [15, 39, 40]. Experiential learning provides a complete learning experience for the student, one where they both understand the concept behind an idea and interactively learn about it [16]. Within the context of experiential learning, different activities have been employed by instructors such as exercises [27], projects [21], simulations [66], and role-playing [54]. Experiential learning, compared to traditional teaching approaches such as lectures, has been demonstrated to be more engaging for students [43], and supports student retention of information [32, 67]. Examples of experiential learning in computing education include teaching software engineering using interactive tutorials [41] and software estimation using LEGOs [43]. (El-Glaly et al 2020).

Lei Song, Americans with Disabilities Act Instructional Designer at the University of Toledo, credits the following factors for the success of a training for instructors on how to make their online teaching accessible: (Hope, 2020)

• Instructor facilitation. Transitioning the training from self-paced to instructor-facilitated keeps participants on schedule. (Hope, 2020)

• Storytelling. Links to YouTube videos give participants insights about disability culture and evoke compassion for what students with disabilities experience. (Hope, 2020)

• Hands-on practice. Assignments such as remediating Word documents, PowerPoints, and PDFs and captioning video provide instructors with hands-on experience, making their course materials accessible. (Hope, 2020)

• Sense of community. The course members talk to one another and form a community of inquiry on accessibility. (Hope, 2020)

The WCAG guidelines are based on four principles that provide the foundation for web accessibility: that content is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. (Ladner, Ludi and Domanski, 2023)

It is important to have concrete examples that students can relate to as motivation for learning. (Ladner, Ludi and Domanski, 2023)

ACTIVITIES: It would be helpful for students to understand how people use the web with alternative technologies such as screen readers, speech input, and switches. Students should understand that the web is for everyone regardless of their disability. (Ladner, Ludi and Domanski, 2023)

ACTIVITIES: Develop short demos of how screen readers, speech input, and switches work on the web. (Ladner, Ludi and Domanski, 2023)

ACTIVITIES: Learn about the fundamentals from the W3C-WIA curriculum framework. (Ladner, Ludi and Domanski, 2023)

ACTIVITIES: Identify quality automated web accessibility checkers. (Ladner, Ludi and Domanski, 2023)

ACTIVITIES: Develop a “Think-Pair-Share” in-class activity for students to explore various personas in their design thinking process, similar to the “GenderMag” method for evaluating software inclusiveness [2].  If possible invite guest speakers from industry who have experience with accessible web design and development. They may be willing to give a lecture about how they incorporate accessibility in their own workflow. (Ladner, Ludi and Domanski, 2023)

ACTIVITIES: Topics Where Accessibility Can Be Included ● Discuss how to make sure there is adequate contrast between text and background. ● For various elements on a web page, images, lists, tables, buttons, and other widget discuss how they can be made accessible then expect that the accessible versions and design practices are applied in course work. ● Discuss how to use ARIA to make interactive pages accessible. ● Give web design and development projects that require accessibility testing. Students can turn in the results from automated accessibility checking along with the developed web pages. ● Demonstrate how search engines rank accessible websites higher in their results and explain the value of this in terms of SEO strategies. Include links to Accessibility Guidelines and Specifications for the platforms and technologies used in the course. Include links to terminology used in the disabled community.  (Ladner, Ludi and Domanski, 2023).

INTERACTIVE ACTIVITY: The second major section is the interactive activity (IA). IAs are used to engage students through first hand experiences with some representative aspects of the accessibility issue or option being explored. (Carter and Fourney, 2007)

REFLECTION: The third major section is a reflection activity. Students are asked to reflect on their experiences and to consider how they can apply them to the design of accessible computing. (Carter and Fourney, 2007)

In the lecture, we discussed the importance of accessible website design and introduced the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which include both general guidance and specific coding examples, for making web content more accessible. The in-class assignment involves visiting a website the student uses frequently and evaluating the site against selected guidelines. (Lazar, Lazar, and Pradhan,2019)

ACTIVITIES: From these papers, we derived that students appear to react better to active learning approaches. Active learning, a focus of our pedagogical approach, has appeared to be a reliable way to distribute information to students and to keep them engaged [11, 21]. (Kelly and El-Glaly 2021)

ACTIVITIES: The accessibility module consists of two main components: 1) The lecture; meant to break down the complex concepts into bite-sized pieces and 2) The hands-on activity; meant to give the students the opportunity to experience the accessibility problem in effect, reverse engineer the problem, and finally fix it. (Kelly and El-Glaly 2021)

ACTIVITIES: At this part of the lecture, the students took part in the first part of the hands-on activity. They were asked to visit an inaccessible website and attempt to navigate it. This provides a solid demonstration of the accessibility errors. (Kelly and El-Glaly 2021)

ACTIVITIES: We demonstrated that the problems they were running into were based on reflow errors and proceeded to define reflow and give the WCAG 2.0 standards [1] that accompany the reflow definition. (Kelly and El-Glaly 2021)

ACTIVITIES: After the students have progressed through the lecture, they are now appropriately equipped with the browser inspection tool to find where the problems are that they can fix. (Kelly and El-Glaly 2021)

ACTIVITIES: We grouped our findings into three categories: knowledge transfer, interest in computing, and overall learning experience. 

1-      Learning about accessibility (increased) To assess the first hypothesis, we analysed the data we collected from the pre and post questionnaires and the reflow quiz. We compared students’ answers about their perception of accessibility and disabilities. We also conducted a descriptive statistical analysis of students’ performance in the reflow quiz. 

2-      Types of disabilities: In the pre-questionnaire, when students asked to give examples of disabilities, most of the answers covered physical disabilities, e.g., blindness and deafness. Forty-two percent of students did not mention any form of invisible disabilities, i.e. learning disabilities or cognitive impairment. This percentage has dropped to 13% in the post questionnaire as more students mentioned invisible disabilities such as dyslexia. This implies that students became more aware of forms of disabilities other than physical disabilities. 

Definition of accessibility: Accessibility can be defined as the design and development of technologies that allow people with disabilities to interact with the web [23]. We did not expect students to know the accessibility definition before the lecture, but we wanted to learn about their awareness and how it changed after the workshop. In the pre-questionnaire, most of the answers did not come close to the accessibility definition and we marked 78.8% of the answers as wrong. (Kelly and El-Glaly 2021)

LEARNING ACTIVITIES: Some students discussed their comfort with the technical details explained in the accessibility module. For example, one student said: “It was generalized so you didn’t need any in-detail knowledge about a topic beforehand for it to be understandable, but if you did have prior knowledge, it would still benefit you.” (Kelly and El-Glaly 2021)

LEARNING ACTIVITIES WCAG: We had tried to cover accessibility, disabilities, and web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) in addition to programming in one setting. The result was that students were confused and disengaged. Working with high school or first-year college students requires us to break down complex knowledge. (Kelly and El-Glaly 2021).

WHAT WORKS: Teaching accessibility to high school students is feasible when proper pedagogy methods are employed. We detailed in this paper an accessibility module that incorporated: 1) lecture for direct and fast information dissemination; and 2) hands-on activity for students’ engagement and the benefits of active learning. The design of the accessibility module was built based on the lessons learned from previous iterations.

 

Experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) proposes that an effective way to learn is through hands-on activities allowing students to actively engage with new concepts and ideas. Providing students the opportunity to engage in hands-on activities related to accessibility enables them to connect with the material more concretely and to reflect on the relevance of what they are learning, while also understanding the importance of empathy and inclusion. Experiential learning activities have been included in multiple courses that included accessibility (Mankoff, 2006; Carter and Fourney, 2007; Freire et al., 2007; El-Glaly, 2020). (Weeden, 2023).

Problem-based learning involves giving students complex, real-world problems to solve, encouraging them to apply their knowledge and skills to find solutions, and building on the idea that students learn best when they are presented with authentic, challenging problems that require them to think critically and creatively to find solutions (Barrows and Tamblyn, 1980). By giving students challenges related to accessibility, students can extend their learning to practical, real-world situations, allowing them to develop practical skills that can be used in their future careers and see the importance of accessibility in their chosen fields. Problem based learning activities have been used to cover accessibility in several courses (Liffick, 2004; Mankoff, 2006; Carter and Fourney, 2007; Rosmaita, 2007; Waller et al., 2009; Martin-Escalona et al., 2013; Zhao et al., 2020). (Weeden, 2023).

Project-based learning focuses on giving students long-term, open-ended projects to work on, encouraging them to apply their knowledge to real-world problems or challenges resulting in the creation of artifact(s) that address the problem or challenge (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). Project-based learning, when applied to accessibility, can engage students by allowing them to see the practical applications of the material. Project-based learning activities have been included in several courses that included accessibility (Ludi, 2007; Alonso et al., 2010; Katsanos et al., 2012; Wang, 2012; Keates, 2015; Shinohara et al., 2016). (Weeden, 2023).

Diff between problem-based and project based: Problem-based learning focuses on the acquisition of new knowledge and the process used to solve the problem. Alternately, project-based learning focuses on the application of existing knowledge on the creation of the respective artifact(s). (Weeden, 2023).

These principles of scaffolding can be applied to a variety of pedagogical practices to cover accessibility. Baker et al. (2020) includes the following practices: assignments, guest lectures from disabled individuals, in-class activities, interactions with disabled individuals, lectures, projects, simulated disability, research, and videos. Putnam et al. (2016) identified additional practices including evaluating the accessibility of a product or website, field trips, reading existing related research, papers where students summarize and reflect on readings, and the use of online resources such as WebAIM.org. Shinohara et al. (2018) found the most common practices used included lectures and class meetings, in-class activities, assignments, and projects. (Weeden, 2023).

Understanding legal requirements and guidelines are essential for ensuring that products and environments are accessible and compliant. (Weeden, 2023).

Finally, web accessibility, with a focus on the WCAG (World Wide Web Consortium, 2018), allows students to understand best practices for designing websites and web-based applications to be accessible to everyone. (Weeden, 2023).

Coverage of sensory, motor, and cognitive accessibility helps students to understand the specific needs and challenges faced by people with disabilities to enable students to design products and environments that are accessible and usable. This can involve designing products and environments that are easy to see, hear, touch, and use. (Weeden, 2023).

Through demonstrations and exploration, students have the opportunity to experience how AT can be used to perceive and interact with web-based content. (Weeden, 2023).

Caption a video—A series of activities scaffolds learning cumulating in a project where students independently caption a video. Class demonstrations show the options available to generate a transcript of the audio content of a video. Students first caption a short video, then after receiving feedback, caption a longer video for their project. These activities reinforce the importance of captioning and offer repeated practice creating appropriate captions. (Weeden, 2023).

Composing alternative text for images—A series of activities scaffolds the learning of composing appropriate alternative text for images. First, students are given a series of images to determine if the alternative text is sufficient. If the alternative text is not sufficient, they must cite why and compose appropriate alternative text. The class discusses and reviews the solution. The instructor also provides feedback to each student. Students then complete a project where they each find six images that do not have appropriate alternative text. For each image, the student explains why the alternative text implementation is not sufficient and composes appropriate alternative text. These activities emphasize the importance of appropriate alternative text through repeated practice. (Weeden, 2023).

Conducting an accessibility evaluation—A series of activities scaffolds the learning of conducting an accessibility evaluation of a webpage cumulating in students independently performing an accessibility evaluation of a given webpage based on Level AAA of the current version of the WCAG (World Wide Web Consortium, 2018). Completing the assessment involves using screen readers and other technologies and tools to evaluate the accessibility of the page. (Weeden, 2023).

Students document their findings and make recommendations to fix accessibility issues. As preparation for this cumulating experience, an accessibility evaluation is started together in class. Students complete that evaluation across two assignments, with each assignment reviewed and discussed in class. Through these activities, students gain a deeper understanding of how to design for accessibility, as well as how to identify and address issues of accessibility in digital content. (Weeden, 2023).

Accessibility needs through ages:Accessibility through the lifespan course - Students examine the accessibility needs and challenges faced by children and young adults in educational contexts and identify effective design strategies for promoting accessibility. They also learn about laws and regulations that govern accessibility in educational contexts, including the provision of AT and the accessibility of instructional technology and materials. (Weeden, 2023).

These resources shed light on the challenges and barriers faced by disabled individuals in the workplace and provide students with valuable insights into the experiences of disabled individuals seeking and maintaining employment. With these insights, students can begin to develop strategies and solutions for promoting accessibility and inclusion in the workplace. (Weeden, 2023).

Finally, students investigate the changes in ability that can occur as part of the aging process and explore how to design usable and engaging technology for the growing population of older adults. (Weeden, 2023).

P.136 Raising awareness of accessibility laws and changing the narrative from accessible course content creation that ‘must be done’ to something that is the right thing to do to support student success to become a standard part of all professional development (Nash et el, 2024).

Define accessibility to provide a common foundation using digital accessibility guidelines such as WCAG (Thompson et al, 2009) (Bartlett, Warren and Ehrlich, 2024).

Develop an understanding of digital accessibility and the impact of barriers (Bartlett, Warren and Ehrlich, 2024)

As well as awareness, it’s important to include strategies to be able to create content (Bartlett, Warren and Ehrlich, 2024)

##Sequenced to begin with a focus of building empathy and understanding, major types of disability (vision, hearing, physical and cognition), AT, videos of first-hand testimonials, panel discussions on disability etiquette (Thompson, 2024).

##Empathy serves as an important frame of reference for the legal, design and digital topics that follow (Thompson, 2024).

#Reinforcing the human centred perspective and the social model of disability mindset (Thompson, 2024).

Rationale and the importance of digital accessibility from perspectives of equity and inclusivity as well as legal implications (Zhang and Sickel, 2024).

Key principles with scenarios and examples with video demonstrations to apply formatting- headings, lists, images (alt) links, tables, colour, audio and video (Zhang and Sickel, 2024).

##P.244 This introduced the key principles by providing examples for analysis/ comparison and to promote asking questions about the experiences of those with various disabilities. This approach is employed to help participants consider the rationale behind each principle and the implications of inaccessible content (Zhang and Sickel, 2024; p,244).

Then followed by short tutorials that demonstrate practical applications in various authoring tools such as Word, Google docs etc (Zhang and Sickel, 2024).

Evaluation of resources and how they can be made more accessible - helps participants to immediately be able to apply their knowledge in a practical and appropriate manner (Zhang and Sickel, 2024).

P.267 ACTIVITIES- In Word participants analyse a document using the accessibility checker and remediate at least 3 accessibility barriers - they discuss what barriers they identify, how they can be addressed to make them accessible and identify who benefits (Caprette, 2024b).