Time for digital inclusion at scale

 Shinohara et al (2018b) surveyed a total of 1857 computing and science faculty members across the US. They found that 175 institutions (50%) had at least one instructor teaching accessibility and that no fewer than 2.5% of faculty overall teach accessibility. One of the key questions was what barriers teachers face. The most critical barriers were the absence of clear and discipline specific learning objectives and lack of faculty knowledge about digital accessibility. They wanted resources specific to the area they taught rather than the general accessibility guidelines. Without this it was felt that faculty had s limited capacity to change and were held back because of resources and knowledge preventing them from being change agents. They were also found that those who did teach the subject or had expertise were mainly those who taught human computer interaction courses. Some of the main challenges were that overall they did not know enough to teach it due to lack of resources, ...

Introduction - The teaching of digital accessibility This part of the literature review will explore the teaching of digital accessibility related topics, how learners respond to being taught the subject, and what can be learned from the experiences of those who teach the subject. Why it’s important to prepare young people for workplace and society. It’s taught mainly in computer/HCI courses  Taught in different ways  Overview- Taught as modules, short courses, and within whole courses  Main learning objectives  Ways it is taught and training widely disseminated   MOOCs for wider dissemination *Workshops (work based training - might put earlier) Taught integrally across a course It’s a multidisciplinary topic with several lenses Taught from WCAG guidelines and tools Complexity for beginners etc Taught with users and/or simulations Simulations and user contact effectiveness  Challenges of learning the topic Learners not aware prior to course  It needs t...

 Poor et al (2009) was keen to explore whether or not students had a heightened awareness of accessibility after exposure to being taught the subject. They used a pre and post course survey of 63 items that students needed to rate by importance. They divided these by types of systems such as communication, application, mobile devices and so on. 38 students participated and it was found that items related to accessibility showed a significant change and those that didn’t dropped concluding that the accessibility element of the course had an impact on students attitudes.   Kawas, Vonessen and Ko (2019) highlighted the lack of professional development for teachers learning new topics, especially that around digital accessibility. They suggested that there are resources to learn from, but teachers needed more pedagogical resources and time to learn the subject to be able to confidently change what they teach and include it. They conducted 18 semi-structured interviews asking ...

Putnam et al (2016) argue that computing education needs to respond to the needs of our digital society, including those with disabilities and the aging population to include topics about accessibility and designing for inclusion. They highlight that many authors have argued similarly for the teaching of accessibility related topics within the computing and ICT curricula (Waller et al, 2009; Lazar, 2002; Rosmaita et al, 2006; Bohman, 2012). They explain that most studies currently provide small scale examples or first person reflections or descriptions of teaching accessibility. Their aim was to explore examples in literature and synthesise these against their own studies of existing programs that had taught elements of accessibility. To explore existing programs Putnam et al (2016) searched the top 160 universities in the US, and by using keywords they analysed course descriptions that included topics such as accessibility, assistive technology, design for all, inclusive design, unive...

MOOC To ensure those in Ontario, Canada could meet their obligations under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act (AODA) (Ref), a series of free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were created to teach digital accessibility to a range of audiences such as office support workers, managers, developers and digital accessibility specialists (Gay, 2023). The MOOCs ran between 2016 and 2019 and served more that 5000 participants. To further explore the need for these resources, in 2020 a market scan of Canadian and international post secondary educational institutions was conducted. It revealed that at the time no Canadian universities were teaching accessibility within their ICT provision. As a result the MOOCs were converted into Open Educational Resources (OERs) so they could support learning in that area. Between 2020 and 2022 they were downloaded more than 10,000 times.  The OER material covered several courses, such as an introduction to WCAG, web accessibility auditi...

 Here is another common myth people make about deaf and hard of hearing people when it comes to accessibility. Myth: Folks think captions and sign language interpreters are the only digital accessibility deaf and hard of hearing people need. We run into more barriers than you think. Here are some. 1. The lack of options for alert notifications. 2. Being forced to enter a phone number in contact forms and job applications. 3. An app or website requires voice input to proceed. 4. An app or website that requires listening to the audio. 5. Artificial intelligence that doesn't understand our voices. My name is not Miro, Maryland, Meow, or Marijuana 🤣 6. Dealing with a lot of motion even with reduced motion turned on. 7. Authentication through a computerized phone call where we have to listen to the numbers. Too often, people and businesses rely on one default method.

 If schools had it on the curriculum the Google discovery centre could be a mainstream educational visitor centre.