Three useful papers

Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019 – Efficacy of film for raising awareness of diverse users

In this paper, we present a study of the efficacy of short (10-minute) documentaries, created by student filmmakers, that portrayed three people with different disabilities. We evaluated the films with undergraduate and graduate students who were enrolled in technology-related courses to explore the films’ abilities to raise awareness for concerns related to accessibility. We found that the films were effective at changing some incorrect assumptions about designing for diverse users and increasing recognition of the importance of designing for diversity (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

‘Teach Access’, for example, is an initiative aimed at ensuring that college graduates in technology-related fields have accessibility knowledge [Teach Access]. Originated by accessibility teams at Yahoo and Facebook, the group now includes several supporting ICT companies (e.g., Microsoft, Adobe and Google) and universities (e.g., Georgia Institute of Technology and Stanford University) (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Educators have discussed integrating accessibility topics using varied methods: (a) as an integral part of the curriculum where it is discussed in multiple courses [e.g. Waller, Hnason and Sloan, 2009]; (b) as a standalone course [e.g. Wang, 2012]; and (c) as a one-two week module in a larger course [e.g. Escalona, Barcelo-Arroyo, and Zola, 2013]. One key finding of our earlier related work [Putnam et al, 2015– learning empathy paper], in which we summarized 18 interviews with university professors who taught accessibility-related courses and modules in the US, was a desire for more shared resources, like videos/films, to aid in the teaching of inclusive design (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

In a study closely related to the one presented in this paper, Carmichael et al. [Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007] created scripted videos with actors to communicate the needs of users who were elderly with the explicit goal of increasing awareness among ICT students. The authors found that their videos had a positive impact by changing some of their students’ views about how to consider people who were elderly in technology design (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Alex Carmichael, Alan F. Newell, and Maggie Morgan. 2007. The efficacy of narrative video for raising awareness in ICT designers about older users’ requirements. Interacting with Computers, 19, 587-596.

Building on [Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007], we created three short documentaries (about 10-minutes each) that profile women who had different disabilities. The films were created with undergraduate filmmakers who were taking a documentary-making course. We then showed the films to undergraduate and graduate students who were taking technology-related courses at DePaul University; the courses were in programs that did not have an emphasis on inclusive design. The films did not focus explicitly on technology use; instead, we allowed the films’ subjects to guide the discussion. Our goals included (a) raising awareness about the needs of people with disabilities and (b) changing how students considered developing and designing technologies for diverse users (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

The first film followed Kat who demonstrated and discussed multiple challenges that she encountered in everyday life using her manual wheelchair. Topics included grocery shopping, commuting by bus and her own car, using ATMs (especially challenging with her partially paralyzed hands), domestic chores (e.g. cleaning house and cooking), and navigating the streets and parks of Chicago. The documentary captured Kat’s wicked sense of humor and simultaneously highlighted challenges that able-bodied people might not ever consider, e.g., the difficulty of finding an apartment that ‘worked’ for her as a single woman living alone (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

The second film portrayed Michelle, who was born deaf, as she interacted with her family (husband and three daughters), performed her multi-faceted job in a social work-related field, and presented technologies designed for people who are deaf to the first author’s graduate course focused on accessibility. As an ASL speaker, her use of technologies for communicating with others (both hearing and deaf) was highlighted throughout the film. Michelle’s story included reflections about how it was to grow up as the only person who was deaf in a hearing family and how things are different (and similar) for two of her daughters who have hearing impairments (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

In the third film, Sammi, who is blind and worked as a voice actor and dialect coach for other actors, demonstrated how she used voice-over technologies for her work and everyday tasks. The documentary also focused on transportation and other daily challenges where technologies might help e.g., cooking eggs. As a young woman in her 20s who lived with roommates, her story resonated with many of the students. In the final scene she tells the audience in a voiceover as she is filmed on her deck enjoying the Late Show on her phone: “People put me on a pedestal and see me as an inspiration, and nothing else. if you want to compliment me, compliment me on my work or things I have achieved, not because I have learned how to use a cane.” (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019)

A total of 116 students taking computer science, information technology and information systems courses participated in this study (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Pre-film questionnaires asked, “Tell us about what you know about accessibility and designing for people who have a disability.” This was followed by asking their level of agreement (Likert scale 1-5) to statements adapted from Carmichael et al. [7]; see the five-statement list in the sidebar (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

After the films, students were given a second questionnaire that asked (a) about their major takeaways from the films and (b) (again) their agreement to the five statements. This was followed by a short discussion of their takeaways (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Statement 1. “Most current interfaces are easy for most people to use.” There was a statistical significance change indicating that students were less likely to agree that interfaces were easy to use after viewing the films (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Statement 2. “Successful design, including technology design, for people with disabilities is a matter of following the appropriate guidelines properly.” There was a statistical significance change indicating that students were slightly less likely to agree that creating accessible products was simply about following guidelines (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Statement 3. “People with disabilities are not interested in new technology.” There was a statistical significance change indicating that students were slightly less likely to agree that people with disabilities were not interested in new technologies after the films (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Statement 4. “Designing for people with disabilities is the same as designing for any niche market.” There was a statistical significance change, indicating that students were slightly less likely to agree designing for disabilities was the same as other niche markets (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Statement 5. “Specialist (rather than mainstream) companies should provide technology suitable for use by people with disabilities or impairments.” This was the only statement in which there was no statistical significance change (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

We organized the most common takeaways into five major themes: (1) Call to action; (2) post-film societal reflections; (3) Reflections on challenges that people who are disabled face; (4) Personal reflections about how the films impacted them; and (5) Comments/ reflections about the film’s three subjects (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Theme 1: Call to Action. Fifty-one (44%) of students responded to the films with a call to action; the most common responses included a need for better accommodations, and more research and regulations that consider people with disabilities. For example, a student wrote: “There needs to be more conscious effort to make physical spaces accessible. School systems need to be adapted for those who are deaf and foster a culture.” (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019)

Theme 2: Post-film societal reflections. Fifty-one (44%) of students included societal reflections in their responses. Students told us they were not previously aware of many of the issues presented in the films and that designing for accessibility was too often overlooked; for example, a graduate student submitted: “My major takeaways from watching Kat, Michelle and Sammi are, we don't really think about how hard people with disabilities have it. We take things for granted, as far as, accessibility because we don't face those challenges.” (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019)

Theme 3: Reflections on challenges that people who are disabled face. Twenty-four (21%) students included reflections about the challenges faced by people who have disabilities; for example, a graduate student submitted: “People with disabilities are really struggling with the most current interfaces.” (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019)

Theme 4: Personal reflections about how the films impacted them. Twenty-four (21%) students also included personal reflections about the films. Most were reflections about their previous ignorance; an undergraduate student wrote: “I never noticed how much technology needs to improve or be made for people who have disabilities. Also, how much changing simple procedures can help/improve the lives of people who have disabilities.” (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019)

Theme 5: Comments/reflections about the film’s three subjects. Seventeen (15%) participants reflected directly about the positive attitude demonstrated by the films’ subjects and/or the independence of the three women who were profiled in the films. An example of this theme included: “However, I was struck by their upbeat and positive attitudes. I can only hope that these films encourage others like me to think more about what we can do with the skills that we have to make the world more accessible to ALL people.” (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019)

Our findings indicated that the films were effective at changing some incorrect assumptions about accessible technology design and increasing students’ awareness of the importance of considering diverse users. In future projects, we hope to expand on this work by building collaborations with other like-minded educators towards the creation of information sharing and material repositories aimed at helping instructors constructively include accessibility concerns in their classrooms (Putnam, Hanschke and Rana, 2019).

Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007 - The efficacy of narrative video for raising awareness in ICT designers about older users’ requirements

Preliminary results show the impact such videos can have on relevant audiences’ perspective on designing systems for older adults. The findings suggest that they can influence the mind set of those with little or no experience of designing for older users and that this influence can persist in the longer term. The findings also suggest that the extent of this influence can be an appropriate alternative to that of meeting and interacting with older users in a user centred design process, which although very valuable can be a logistically (and otherwise) challenging element in the training of prospective software designers (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007).

It is only with such awareness that the potential for empathy can be realised, such empathy will provide the motivation to seek out and utilise suitable user information as the basis of more appropriate designs for more, and more diverse, groups of users. (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007).

Further, many designers simply do not utilise such guidelines as do exist, and there is evidence suggesting that even when they are used, guidelines in isolation, have limited efficacy (Sloan et al., 2002, Kelly, 2002, Diaper and Worman, 2003) and can often be inappropriately applied in the absence of broader knowledge about the context of the user population to which they relate (Thatcher, 2003). (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007).

In contrast to this, most user information is presented in textual and numerical/tabulated form and requires a marked degree of interpretation if they are to be successfully incorporated into a design. This indicates that the mere availability of guidelines, or equivalent information, is not enough to ensure their utility, nor, it would seem, are the relevant legal imperatives (Gregor et al., 2005). (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007). – Interpreting these without contextual understanding leaves room for oversight. (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007).

‘User Centred Design’ methodologies, and ‘usability testing’ were developed to provide ways in which designers can address the actual characteristics of their user population. (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007).

Another approach commonly used in User Centred Design to foster designers’ engagement with users is that of personas and scenarios (see for example, Cooper, 1999, Carroll, 1997, Benyon and Macaulay, 2002). An important motivation in the development of these approaches was to help designers to break away from a mindset that (albeit implicitly) encourages them to essentially design for themselves (Keates et al., 2000). However, personas and scenarios are limited by similar presentational factors as mentioned above for ‘user data’, by being static and essentially text based. (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007).

The ‘person’ within a persona does promote engagement and some degree of ‘empathy’ between the designer and their potential users. However, the efficacy of such empathy can be offset by its focus on a (quasi) individual rather than on a relatively diverse group of individuals. (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007).

An important strand of the work in the UTOPIA project was the development of video portrayals of some of the common challenges and difficulties older people can experience with modern technologies. (Carmichael, Newell, and Morgan. 2007).

Holiday 2020 – The compliance mindset

The qualitative study consisted of semi-structured interviews with ten participants of varying seniority at an IT consultancy. Roles included user-experience and visual designers (P1, P6, P8, P9), developers (P2, P4, P5) and others involved in advisory, sales and project management (P3, P7, P10). For the rest of this paper, the term ‘practitioner’ refers to designers and developers. (Holiday, 2020).

The main findings were that, while accessibility is well embedded into individual practitioner workflows, there is a heavy emphasis on compliance which can lead to issues if it overrules a user-focused approach. These findings were used to inform four principles for adoption in client-based settings to be tested in future work: Put users before compliance, always consider accessibility, facilitate practitioner passion, and automate with care. (Holiday, 2020).

The importance of the internet in modern day life is undeniable, being a key method of access for many services including education, entertainment, and social interactions. Particularly for people with disabilities, access to the Internet can improve independence, reduce isolation and even provide new employment opportunities from home [Bradley and Poppen, 2003]. (Holiday, 2020).

Natalie Bradley and William Poppen. 2003. Assistive technology, computers and internet may decrease sense of isolation for homebound elderly and disabled persons. Technology and Disability 15, 1: 19–25.https://doi.org/10.3233/tad-2003-15104

RATIONALE: The 2020 WebAIM Million report found that 98.1% of home pages had detectable violations of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines [WebAIM, 2020]. This is supported by other studies which have also found accessibility compliance to be below 20% [4, 5]. This leads to a “digital divide” between people who can access these services and those who can’t, often further excluding people already in disadvantaged positions [6]. (Holiday, 2020).

[4] Eleanor T. Loiacono, Nicholas C. Romano, and Scott McCoy. 2009. The state of corporate website accessibility. Communications of the ACM 52, 9: 128–132. https://doi.org/10.1145/1562164.1562197

[5] Eleanor Loiacono and Scott Mccoy. 2004. Web site accessibility: An online sector analysis. Information Technology & People 17, 1: 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1108/ 09593840410522198

[6] Stephen J. Macdonald and John Clayton. 2013. Back to the future, disability and the digital divide. Disability and Society 28, 5: 702–718. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.732538

While many studies have measured adoption by assessing websites in a quantitative way [4, 5, 7–9], fewer have taken a qualitative approach by interviewing the practitioners themselves [10–12]. (Holiday, 2020).

The social model of disability states that while individuals may have impairments, disability is a result of society not accommodating for such impairments [13]. As such, society should adapt to accommodate individuals rather than the onus being on the individual to adapt to society (as is the case with traditional medical models). Therefore, services on the Internet should be fully accessible. (Holiday, 2020).

[13] John Harris and Vicky White. 2013. A Dictionary of Social Work and Social Care: social model of disability. [14] Edward Steinfeld. 2012.

Previous studies into the adoption of accessibility have led to the development of several models for improving levels of adoption and raising awareness of accessibility [10, 11, 19–22]. Recommendations from these authors include reducing the emphasis on the WCAG guidelines [10, 11] in favour of a broader perspective [21], arguing that 45% of problems were not a violation of WCAG [11]. Some models suggest greater consideration of the context of development and the target audience, rather than aiming for a universal solution [22], reflecting Kane’s Ability-Based Design approach. (Holiday, 2020).

Exploration of subthemes suggests the potential dangers of an overly compliance-focused approach, such as:

Box-ticking Exercise. Practitioners disapproved of an over-emphasis on compliance which could lead to a very standardized box-ticking approach to accessibility. (Holiday, 2020).

Instead, participants described accessibility implementation being much more meaningful – and motivating – when it was user-focused rather than checklist-based: “just putting it in front of people just made the world of difference and it made you feel more empowered like you could do it”. (Holiday, 2020).

Lack of Testing with Real Users. While the WCAG guidelines recommend user testing, availability of WCAG checklists focused on technical implementation can lead to a reluctance to perform accessibility testing with real users. Cost was also identifed as a barrier with user testing being seen as expensive. Similarly, participants ex-pressed a lack of access to disabled users either through third-party services or internally within client companies. (Holiday, 2020).

Emerging Theme: Automated Testing. Both box-ticking approaches and an inability to test with users can lead to the use of automated testing tools to highlight issues with compliance. As most participants were still performing accessibility checks manu-ally, this is an emerging subtheme that warrants further exploration. While some participants supported automated testing, there was recognition that this “shouldn’t be something you rely on”. (Holiday, 2020).

Kuang et al, 2024 - Mapping Accessibility Assignments into Core Computer Science Topics: An Empirical Study with Interviews and Surveys of Instructors and Students

However, many CS programs lack accessibility coverage, often confining it to human-computer interaction (HCI) courses. To address this gap, we developed accessibility assignments seamlessly integrated into core CS courses. We collaborated closely with ten instructors to select and customize these assignments to suit their needs. To evaluate the impact of these assignments, we conducted interviews with instructors and administered surveys and interviews with their students. Our findings indicate significant improvement in students’ familiarity with accessibility concepts and confidence in implementation following completion of the assignments. However, their mindset and future interest in accessibility remained the same. Instructors found it straightforward to incorporate these assignments without compromising core computing concepts. (Kuang et al, 2024).

The ubiquity of technology in modern society underscores the importance of ensuring that they are accessible to all individuals. As technology evolves, so too must the education of future technology professionals in the principles and practices of accessibility. (Kuang et al, 2024).

Currently in computer science (CS) education, accessibility is confined primarily to specialized courses, such as human computer interaction (HCI) [25, 34], rather than being directly integrated into core CS curriculum; this approach is dependent on the personal initiative of the course instructor [36]. Furthermore, many instructors do not feel comfortable teaching accessibility due to having limited knowledge in the area [36]. This compartmentalization of courses and lack of instructor expertise raise concerns about if students are adequately equipped to incorporate accessibility into their future work as CS professionals. (Kuang et al, 2024).

25] Claudia Loitsch, Gerhard Weber, and Jens Voegler. 2016. Teaching Accessibility with Personas. In Computers Helping People with Special Needs (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), 453–460. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41264-1_62

34] Helen Petrie and Alistair Edwards. 2006. Inclusive design and assistive technology as part of the HCI curriculum.

36] Cynthia Putnam, Maria Dahman, Emma Rose, Jinghui Cheng, and Glenn Brad-ford. 2016. Best Practices for Teaching Accessibility in University Classrooms: Cultivating Awareness, Understanding, and Appreciation for Diverse Users. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing 8, 4: 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1145/2831424

Instead of a dedicated course on accessibility, which risks being discontinued due to low enrolment [5], we exposed students to accessibility concepts within foundational CS courses. We developed three versions of assignments that covered accessibility topics on Braille, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) [18], and accessibility checkers, while ensuring that students still met the technical learning objectives for core topics: dictionaries, Array Lists, and binary trees. Previous work on integrating accessibility into CS courses was largely implemented by instructors with prior accessibility experiences [31, 35, 48], therefore we focused on fusing topics for instructors without accessibility backgrounds. (Kuang et al, 2024).

5] Paul Ryan Bohman. Teaching Accessibility and Design-For-All in the Information and Communication Technology Curriculum: Three Case Studies of Universities in the United States, England, and Austria

18] W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). 2023. WCAG 2 Overview. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Retrieved September 14, 2023 from https://www.w3.org/ WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

31] Nidhi Rajendra Palan, Vicki L. Hanson, Matt Huenerfauth, and Stephanie Ludi. 2017. Teaching Inclusive Thinking in Undergraduate Computing. In Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 399–400. https://doi.org/10.1145/3132525.3134808

35] G. Michael Poor, Laura M. Leventhal, Julie Barnes, Duke R. Hutchings, Paul Albee, and Laura Campbell. 2012. No User Left Behind: Including Accessibility in Student Projects and the Impact on CS Students’ Attitudes. ACM Transactions on Computing Education 12, 2: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1145/2160547.2160548

48]

Qiwen Zhao, Vaishnavi Mande, Paula Conn, Sedeeq Al-khazraji, Kristen Shi-nohara, Stephanie Ludi, and Matt Huenerfauth. 2020. Comparison of Methods for Teaching Accessibility in University Computing Courses. In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3417013

Our goal was to enable instructors to teach a topic they may not have expertise in. (Kuang et al, 2024).

To evaluate the impact of these assignments, we conducted experience sampling and interviews with eight instructors and interviews with 15 students to gather qualitative feedback about the assignments from eight different institutions. We collected 249 matched student responses to the pre-assignment and post-assignment surveys, which measured their accessibility knowledge, implementation, mindset, and future interest. Our study illustrates that instructors found our accessibility integration approach easy to implement, affirming that it exposed students to accessibility concepts without compromising their grasp of core computing concepts. Our findings also reveal significant advancements in students’ understanding of accessibility concepts and their confidence in developing and evaluating accessibility features. (Kuang et al, 2024).

In sum, our research validated a foundational approach for addressing the accessibility education gap within undergraduate CS programs. By providing instructors with resources and enhancing their accessibility knowledge, we contribute a strategy about how to equip future technology professionals with accessibility knowledge toward creating a more inclusive digital landscape. (Kuang et al, 2024).

In previous research studies, instructors incorporated accessibility into computing courses in two main ways: throughout the entire curriculum and in specific elective classes [3, 6, 13, 15]. Teaching accessibility as part of a broader curriculum has been more sustainable than accessibility-specific programs, which were discontinued due to low enrolment [5]. Accessibility was also taught in specific elective classes such as accessibility in software engineering [10, 30] and universal design [23]. In such courses, student knowledge and awareness of accessibility increased, as well as comfort level in interacting with people with disabilities [23]. In other courses, accessibility was not the main topic, but was integrated as a theme throughout [4, 26, 37, 45]. This method was frequently used in HCI courses. In other work, instructors integrated accessibility through the use of accessibility modules within a non-accessibility specific class [12, 19, 29, 44, 48]. Although some educators and researchers have explored introducing accessibility into computing education, most practices integrate accessibility into elective, not core, CS courses. A few efforts have been made to add accessibility into core courses [3]. We expand on prior work by investigating effective approaches to incorporate accessibility into core courses. (Kuang et al, 2024).

3, Catherine Baker, Yasmine Elglaly, and Kristen Shinohara. 2020. A Systematic Analysis of Accessibility in Computing Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3328778.3366843

6, Jim A. Carter and David W. Fourney. 2007. Techniques to assist in developing accessibility engineers. In Proceedings of the 9th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility (Assets ’07), 123–130. https://doi.org/10.1145/1296843.1296865

13, Mexhid Ferati and Bahtijar Vogel. 2020. Accessibility in Web Development Courses: A Case Study. Informatics 7, 1: 8. https://doi.org/10.3390/ informatics7010008

15, Ed Gellenbeck. 2005. Integrating accessibility into the computer science curriculum. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 21, 1: 267–273

5, Paul Ryan Bohman. Teaching Accessibility and Design-For-All in the Information and Communication Technology Curriculum: Three Case Studies of Universities in the United States, England, and Austria.

10, Yasmine N. El-Glaly. 2020. Teaching Accessibility to Software Engineering Students. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 121–127. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366914

30, Rafael Molina-Carmona, Rosana Satorre-Cuerda, Carlos Villagrá-Arnedo, and Patricia Compañ-Rosique. 2017. Training Socially Responsible Engineers by Developing Accessible Video Games. In Learning and Collaboration Technologies. Technology in Education (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), 182–201. https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58515-4_15

23, Sri H. Kurniawan, Sonia Arteaga, and Roberto Manduchi. 2010. A general education course on universal access, disability, technology and society. In Proceedings of the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility, 11–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/1878803.1878808

4, Kimberly Edginton Bigelow. Designing for Success: Developing Engineers Who Consider Universal Design Principles

26, Stephanie Ludi. 2007. Introducing Accessibility Requirements through External Stakeholder Utilization in an Undergraduate Requirements Engineering Course. In 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’07), 736–743. https: //doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2007.46

37, Kristen Shinohara, Cynthia L. Bennett, Wanda Pratt, and Jacob O. Wobbrock. 2018. Tenets for Social Accessibility: Towards Humanizing Disabled People in Design. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing 11, 1: 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1145/3178855

45, Ye Diana Wang. 2012. A holistic and pragmatic approach to teaching web accessibility in an undergraduate web design course. In Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on Information technology education, 55–60. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 2380552.2380568

12, Yasmine El-Glaly, Weishi Shi, Samuel Malachowsky, Qi Yu, and Daniel E. Krutz. 2020. Presenting and evaluating the impact of experiential learning in computing accessibility education. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training, 49–60. https://doi.org/10.1145/3377814.3381710

19, Lin Jia, Yasmine N. Elglaly, Catherine M. Baker, and Kristen Shinohara. 2021. Infusing Accessibility into Programming Courses. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–6. https://doi. org/10.1145/3411763.3451625

29, Israel Martin-Escalona, Francisco Barcelo-Arroyo, and Enrica Zola. 2013. The introduction of a topic on accessibility in several engineering degrees. In 2013 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 656–663. https://doi. org/10.1109/EduCon.2013.6530177

44, Annalu Waller, Vicki L. Hanson, and David Sloan. 2009. Including accessibility within and beyond undergraduate computing courses. In Proceedings of the 11th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility, 155–162. https://doi.org/10.1145/1639642.1639670

48, Qiwen Zhao, Vaishnavi Mande, Paula Conn, Sedeeq Al-khazraji, Kristen Shi-nohara, Stephanie Ludi, and Matt Huenerfauth. 2020. Comparison of Methods for Teaching Accessibility in University Computing Courses. In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3417013

Accessibility is taught through different pedagogical approaches, including lectures, group projects, in-class activities, guest speakers, videos, interactions with people with disabilities and research [3 ]. Poor et al. investigated the impact of class projects involving build ing and testing a UI that includes non-mouse- and non-keyboard-based input–on student knowledge of accessibility [35 ], finding that students developed a greater understanding and awareness of accessibility and usability issues. Palan et al.’s work examining a week of lectures during an HCI course, focused on topics such as accessible website design, common assistive technologies, and legal requirements, similarly revealed an increase of knowledge and awareness [31 ]. Another study found that accessibility modules increased student learning of accessibility and motivated them to create accessible software [12 ]. Zhao et al. conducted a longitudinal study comparing four different methods for teaching accessibility–a week of lectures, team design project involving accessibility, interaction with a person with a disability, and collaboration with a team member with a disability. This study found that lectures, team projects, and interaction with people with disabilities gave students greater awareness of accessibility issues and increased the likelihood that they would design with accessibility in mind in the short term. However, when surveyed two years later, students showed no significant improvements in their understanding of accessibility than before the class that incorporated accessibility [48 ]. Students also viewed accessibility as a specialized skill that was not applicable for future jobs [8 ]. These results suggest that a single class may not have enough influence on students’ knowledge of accessibility long-term. In sum, hands-on activities and experiential learning were found to be effective methods for teaching accessibility in the short term [12 ]. Our work follows a similar approach as we incorporated accessibility into programming assignments, providing the students with a hands-on learning experience. (Kuang et al, 2024).

35,

31,

12,

48,

12,

Teaching accessibility was shown to be challenging for instructors who are not experts in accessibility [38], and thus is largely reliant on the personal initiative of the instructor. This need for expertise may explain why HCI instructors are more likely to teach accessibility [36]. (Kuang et al, 2024).

38, Kristen Shinohara, Saba Kawas, Amy J. Ko, and Richard E. Ladner. 2018. Who Teaches Accessibility?: A Survey of U.S. Computing Faculty. In Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 197–202. https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159484

36, Cynthia Putnam, Maria Dahman, Emma Rose, Jinghui Cheng, and Glenn Brad-ford. 2016. Best Practices for Teaching Accessibility in University Classrooms: Cultivating Awareness, Understanding, and Appreciation for Diverse Users. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing 8, 4: 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1145/2831424

Due to these instructor characteristics and preferences, barriers to teaching accessibility include lack of knowledge, lack of course materials, limited preparation time, little administrative support and no space in the curriculum to include new topics [21]. To address the accessibility knowledge gap of computer science instructors, Kawas et al. proposed a “micro professional development” model to provide instructors with knowledge and resources on how to integrate accessibility into core curriculum by mapping accessibility topics to learning objectives in CS courses [21]. Building on this recommendation, we worked closely with instructors to map accessibility learning objectives to CS topics and equipped instructors with the necessary materials and resources for effective implementation. (Kuang et al, 2024).

21, Saba Kawas, Laura Vonessen, and Amy J. Ko. 2019. Teaching Accessibility: A Design Exploration of Faculty Professional Development at Scale. In Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 983–989. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287399

Computing curriculum that includes accessibility generally tends to focus on a common set of learning objectives, even though no such objectives have yet been officially established: technical knowledge of guidelines and requirements; empathy, e.g. , inclusive design; and future career pathways in accessibility [3 ]. When teaching design, an emphasis is placed on how to prevent or remove barriers that peo ple with physical disabilities encounter [38 ]. (Kuang et al, 2024).

3, Catherine Baker, Yasmine Elglaly, and Kristen Shinohara. 2020. A Systematic Analysis of Accessibility in Computing Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3328778.3366843

In most prior studies, the evaluation of accessibility modules was predominantly based on collecting data from students. Evaluation methods include the use of pre- and post-course questionnaires and surveys [3, 20, 22, 31]. Researchers also evaluated accessibility modules through distribution of quizzes and other graded assignments to students [3]. Prior work also investigated completion rate and retention to determine the longitudinal impact of accessibility teaching methods [48]. Additionally, researchers interviewed students after course completion to collect qualitative data on their learning experience [3, 19]. To our knowledge, no prior work collected feedback from instructors in order to evaluate accessibility modules. Papers dedicated to instructors focused on their overall experience in teaching accessibility, rather than evaluating specific modules, and these instructors were well-versed in accessibility [21, 36]. Additionally, in most prior work, individual instructors implemented their modules at their home institutions [12, 29, 31, 48]. Thus, there is a need for understanding the instructors’ perspective and inter-institutional analysis of the efficacy of accessibility modules. Our study addresses this need by recruiting instructors from different institutions across the United States and gathering feedback from instructors in addition to students. (Kuang et al, 2024).

3, Catherine Baker, Yasmine Elglaly, and Kristen Shinohara. 2020. A Systematic Analysis of Accessibility in Computing Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3328778.3366843

20, Christos Katsanos, Nikolaos Tselios, Athanasios Tsakoumis, and Nikolaos Avouris. 2012. Learning about web accessibility: A project based tool-mediated approach. Education and Information Technologies 17, 1: 79–94. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s10639-010-9145-5

22, Claire Kearney-Volpe, Devorah Kletenik, Kate Sonka, Deborah Sturm, and Amy Hurst. 2019. Evaluating Instructor Strategy and Student Learning Through Digital Accessibility Course Enhancements. In Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’19), 377–388. https://doi.org/10.1145/3308561.3353795

31, Nidhi Rajendra Palan, Vicki L. Hanson, Matt Huenerfauth, and Stephanie Ludi. 2017. Teaching Inclusive Thinking in Undergraduate Computing. In Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 399–400. https://doi.org/10.1145/3132525.3134808

Overall, instructors were supportive of incorporating accessibility education into computer science curriculum, regardless of whether they had no prior knowledge, or had included accessibility topics in prior courses. (Kuang et al, 2024).

Although more than half of the instructors had no prior experience teaching accessibility, all instructors believed that accessibility belonged in the computer science curriculum. (Kuang et al, 2024).

Instructors shared that students were more focused on the technical objectives of the assignment, rather than the accessibility concepts. To counteract this tendency, three instructors who had a background in accessibility tried different teaching strategies to drive home the accessibility concepts by employing multiple modalities (e.g., videos and demos). (Kuang et al, 2024).

Although M5 also had an accessibility background, he mentioned that he did not have time to find additional accessibility resources for this class. (Kuang et al, 2024).

These differences suggest that the assignments were successful in increasing students’ confidence in their knowledge of accessibility and assistive technology. (Kuang et al, 2024).

Feedback about Assignments. Students appreciated the creativity and real-world relevance of the assignments, which enhanced their understanding of accessibility concepts. Students felt the assignments challenged them at an appropriate level, promoting critical thinking and problem-solving skills. (Kuang et al, 2024).

On the other hand, some students encountered challenges in understanding assignment instructions. To address this, they suggested clearer instructions with visual aids to improve assignment navigability. (Kuang et al, 2024).

Finally, students suggested having more introduction to the accessibility concepts, preferably through videos so that they have a stronger background when completing the assignment (e.g., better understanding of what each accessibility checker means in the text file). (Kuang et al, 2024).

A major barrier in teaching accessibility in computing is the lack of resources available to faculty and their lack of knowledge about accessibility [3 ]. In particular, instructors feel ill-prepared and uncomfortable delivering material in which they do not have expertise [3 ].(Kuang et al, 2024).

3, Catherine Baker, Yasmine Elglaly, and Kristen Shinohara. 2020. A Systematic Analysis of Accessibility in Computing Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3328778.3366843

In this work, we addressed this issue by: (1) supplying instructors with materials, including programming assignments and information on accessibility, and (2) collaborating with instructors on determining which topic in their course is a good candidate for accessibility infusion, so that they could integrate accessibility topics comfortably into their core computing courses. We provided empirical data that showed that this strategy directly tackles the barrier of lack of resources and knowledge: instructors were able to teach accessibility alongside their main course learning goals. (Kuang et al, 2024).

Our approach included consultations with instructors to ensure assignments aligned with their course goals and pedagogical preferences. In undertaking the introductory assignment assembly and scaffolding its integration, we removed common barriers that faculty face (i.e., knowledge and time) [21, 38]. We endeavoured to create assignments that could be easily used, regardless of accessibility knowledge, and validated that, with initial parameters in place, teaching accessibility in core computing courses is feasible and sound. Yet, this effort required commitment on our part to prepare the materials in such a way that instructors could easily see the integration into CS concepts they were already teaching. It also required commitment and some effort on the part of the instructors to be willing to include our assignments and adjust them as needed for their courses. Absent this kind of commitment, we would be unable to address the barriers to teaching accessibility. Finally, we were flexible in our approach in support of instructors’ autonomy, and although we provided instructors with the basic materials needed to use the assignments, we lowered the adoption effort by modifying the assignments to suit their teaching style and their courses. (Kuang et al, 2024).

The instructors who participated in our study had a mix of prior experience in teaching accessibility, ranging from none to running a lab on assistive technology. (Kuang et al, 2024).

Despite these differences, instructors taught accessibility effectively, demonstrating that the design of the assignments and instructor support fulfilled a gap on how to include accessibility in CS [36]. (Kuang et al, 2024).

Similarly, previous work had shown that there are limitations to how much one course or lecture could change student minds in the long term [8, 31 ]. (Kuang et al, 2024).

8, Paula Conn, Taylor Gotfrid, Qiwen Zhao, Rachel Celestine, Vaishnavi Mande, Kristen Shinohara, Stephanie Ludi, and Matt Huenerfauth. 2020. Understanding the Motivations of Final-year Computing Undergraduates for Considering Accessibility. ACM Transactions on Computing Education 20, 2: 1–22. https: //doi.org/10.1145/3381911

Given the singular exposure to accessibility in education and the lack of visibility of industry’s demand for accessibility, it is not surprising that students perceived the importance of accessibility to be lower than other topics, e.g. , data science. These findings show that more needs to be done to affect mindset change overall. Indeed, this work shows the effectiveness of including accessibility in core CS courses, mainly that it did not negatively affect student learning about key concepts, and that it raised awareness and increased their knowledge about accessibility. But, future researchers need to build on these practices to increase the number of courses that infuse accessibility, and to broaden the scope of topics that may be included. One approach is to blend accessibility into every part of the curriculum and as part of other career paths. (Kuang et al, 2024).

However, barriers that faculty face, including time constraints and lack of resources and accessibility knowledge, will stymie curricular changes regardless of any official guidance. Our research demonstrated that (1) instructors can successfully adopt new CS materials infused with accessibility content and (2) students can effectively learn accessibility as a fundamental computing concept. We identify two main aspects that contributed to the success of our approach. First, accessibility was added to core courses as a small chunk that does not require prior knowledge and is not too deep nor too complex. This chunking aspect was crucial for the ease of adoption by instructors and ease of learning by students. Second, accessibility was added to the course by swapping an existing assignment rather than adding an extra assignment. This means that the course load for both the instructors and the students remained the same with respect to grading and studying. The accessibility integration approach we have devised is replicable and can be applied to map various accessibility learning objectives into different CS topics [11], thus making accessibility more prominent within the CS curriculum. (Kuang et al, 2024).

11, Yasmine N. Elglaly, Catherine M. Baker, Anne Spencer Ross, and Kristen Shinohara. 2024. Beyond HCI: The Need for Accessibility Across the CS Curriculum. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2024). https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630788

The implications of introducing accessibility content at an early stage of computing education are profound, as it establishes the foundation of basic accessibility knowledge. Instructors of advanced courses can subsequently build upon this foundation, enhancing the depth of students’ understanding. Future research endeavours should focus on providing guidance regarding which accessibility concepts and teaching approaches are most appropriate for students at various stages in their computer science education (Kuang et al, 2024).

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