[NFBCS] Making accessibility part of CS education

[Donald Winiecki]

I teach in a College of Engineering, and have teaching and research duties
in the department of Computer Science. Those duties are related to
improving inclusion, diversity, and equity in the discipline. I have been
working with divisions in the NFB to research accessibility in STEM
education at the post-secondary level, and factors that impede provision of
meaningful instruction with braille and tactile graphics for any student
with disabilities. I hope what I include below is useful here. All of this
is intended to apply to the USA only.

There is non-trivial activity in some graduate schools toward development
of technologies to aid accessibility, but with some exceptions there is
very little focused attention on incorporating accessibility into
undergraduate Computer Science curricula. When this occurs it *usually* is
scoped to one course or one part of one course, with little or no
connection to other courses. In general this is due as much to the fact
that STEM disciplines already have too much content to shoehorn into the
existing curricula, as it has to do with stereotyping and lack of knowledge
and understanding that unfortunately pervades our society, as well as lack
of knowledge and resources when it comes to actually providing accessible
instructional content for students. I am confident every member of this
listserv can bring examples of these things to a conversation.

Even the recently updated (and much-improved) code of ethics from the ACM
does not provide much in the way of direction. "Accessibility" is mentioned
only twice in that code.

The majority of activity in graduate schools is aimed at developing
devices *for
use* by those with disabilities, but only spotty meaningful inclusion of
students and faculty who are themselves disabled. We have all seen
solicitations for "participation" in R&D that effectively ask individuals
to consent to an interview, and then disappear so that the "real experts"
can design *for you*. There are exceptions to this and those schools and
faculty who do make accessibility a principal part of their efforts are
indeed exceptional. As above, I am confident members of this listserv know
or know of some of these programs and people.

>From my research I can say that pockets of students and faculty are
sincerely interested in these issues, but because there is very little
funding for R&D in the area of accessibility, faculty do not typically
sustain a focus in these areas in graduate schools, which only broadens the
base of factors that impede systemic remedies. There are a lot of
chicken-and-egg issues at play.

I'd be happy to talk off-list to anyone interested in what I'm up to and
interim findings and products of my work.

Best,

_don [image: ]




On Sun, Jun 27, 2021 at 11:50 AM Kevin via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> I know that this is a normal part of the computing industry under the
> name of usability and sometimes, human-computer interaction. It would
> then stand to reason that it is part of academia.  At the very least I
> know it is gained during self learning.
>
> Kevin
>
> http://kclive.buzzsprout.com
>
>
> On 6/27/2021 8:15 AM, Tracy Carcione via NFBCS wrote:
> > My brother asked me to find out if blind organizations are working on
> making
> > accessibility and universal design part of CS education programs, and not
> > just as an hour's lip service maybe once a year.  It should be baked into
> > every project.  We all know that accessibility works best if it's built
> in
> > from the start, not sort of tacked on as an afterthought, or, more
> usually,
> > put off indefinitely.
> >
> > I think Jack Heim has been working on this for years, but I don't know
> if we
> > in NFBCS have done much about it.  Have we, and I just don't know?
> >
> > If not, are there things we can do?  I'm mostly retired now, so I have
> more
> > time than I used to.
> >
> > Tracy
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > NFBCS mailing list
> > NFBCS at nfbnet.org
> > http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org
> > To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> NFBCS:
> >
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/kevinsisco61784%40gmail.com
>
> --
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> https://www.avast.com/antivirus
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NFBCS mailing list
> NFBCS at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> NFBCS:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/dwiniecki%40handid.org
>