Exploring pedagogical culture for accessibility education in computing science

Abstract

This paper identifies some of the challenges of teaching and learning accessibility through the lens of pedagogy (which deals with the theory and practice of education). We argue that accessibility education in computing science presents a set of unique and challenging characteristics for those engaged in accessibility capacity building. Significant moves are being made to embed accessibility within academic curricula and professional domains. However, through a qualitative thematic review of the accessibility pedagogic literature, we find that the field lacks the pedagogic culture necessary to support widespread excellence in teaching and learning. Nonetheless, our review identifies aspects of this small but important literature that indicate how a pedagogic culture for accessibility can be stimulated through research, debate and discussion, to promote a more pedagogically-grounded approach to the field as a whole.

Overview of the accessibility of webpages, related research, advantages, guidelines and recommendation

“…The importance of accessible or obstacle-free webpages is emphasized by several international studies and research results. [14,15,20,21,22,23] The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) published in 2008 with the recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) contains exact specifications and numerous recommendations for achieving webpage accessibility. The observation of these guidelines makes the web-based content accessible for more of the disabled and promotes a general usability improvement for non-disabled users as well.…”

“…[5] Numerous studies focus on the instruction of web accessibility. [21,22] The authors conclude that any further development or improvement in the field of accessibility requires the inclusion of the respective principles and technologies into instruction programs. While the Anti-Discrimination against and Remedies for Persons with Disabilities Act in 2008 assigned a formal priority to web accessibility and its instruction, in reality the training programs were not established.…”

“…While the Anti-Discrimination against and Remedies for Persons with Disabilities Act in 2008 assigned a formal priority to web accessibility and its instruction, in reality the training programs were not established. [22] One of the issues of the proceedings of the 2016 Web for All conference contained a suggestion that the relevant pedagogical culture be explored and thoroughly examined [21] in order to promote the inclusion of accessibility into education. The authors of the article discuss the obstacles to learning and the learning process in general according to the theoretical and practical aspects of pedagogy.…”

Methods that teach: developing pedagogic research methods, developing pedagogy

“…This is particularly important for areas where the pedagogic culture is underdeveloped as in research methods education. The pedagogies associated with teaching young people with moderate learning difficulties (in contrast to those with autism, for example) or the teaching of accessibility in computer science (Lewthwaite and Sloan 2016) may be other areas where the pedagogy has been implicit, under-theorised and poorly understood. As such, the methods described in this paper, we argue, have wider application and importance in these and similar situations.…”

Designing for Situational Visual Impairments

“…However, based on the results of our study, it seems that this knowledge is not being passed on to designers. There has been research looking at the pedagogical culture for accessibility in computer science programs [29], and suggestions on how to instil best practice in higher education classrooms [43,58]. However, in addition to formal education, other methods of design training were discussed such as using online courses and learning best practice approaches promoted at conferences.…”