Experiential Accessibility Learning Labs for Computing Education

Abstract

This workshop will introduce our Accessibility Learning Labs (ALL). The objectives of this collaborative project with The National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) are to both inform participants about foundational topics in accessibility and to demonstrate the importance of creating accessible software. The labs enable easy classroom inclusion by providing instructors all necessary materials including lecture and activity slides and videos. Each lab addresses an accessibility issue and contains: I) Relevant background information on the examined issue; II) An example web-based application containing the accessibility problem; III) A process to emulate this accessibility problem; IV) Details about how to repair the problem from a technical perspective; V) Incidents from people who encountered this accessibility issue and how it has impacted their life. The labs may be integrated into a wide variety of curriculum at high schools (9-12), and in undergraduate and graduate courses. The labs will be easily adoptable due to their self-contained nature and their inclusion of all necessary instructional material (eg slides, quizzes, etc). No special software is required to use any portion of the labs since they are web-based and are able to run on any computer with a reasonably recent web browser. There are currently four available labs on the topics of: Colorblindness, Hearing, Blindness and Dexterity. Material is available on our website: http://all.rit.edu A laptop is recommended.