Teaching Accessibility

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Teaching Accessibility Universal Design
Concepts Through theUse of Public Policy
Projects

• Dr. Jonathan Lazar
• Dept of Computer and Information Sciences and
  Universal Usability Laboratory
• Towson University

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• How do you structure a research paper assignment
  in a way that it
• Is interesting to the students?
• Is unlikely to simply be copied from the
  Internet?
• Will actually help students understand concepts
  in a hands-on way?
• Will perform something useful for society?

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And also deal with the fact that

• Much of the policymaking that occurs in the area
  of IT accessibility, is done using LITTLE TO NO
  EMPIRICAL DATA!!!
• Policymakers are starving for data to understand
  whats going on!

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Old Research Paper Assignments
Comic from http//www.anthonyarroyodotcom.com

• Human-Computer Interaction undergraduate class
• All Information Systems and Information
  Technology majors
• Students chose their own topic within HCI
• 10-12 page paper
• With citations and references

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New approach to research papers

• Class-wide public policy projects
• Students learn
• 1. international guidelines related to web
  accessibility
• 2. how to evaluate web sites for accessibility
• 3. specific details of federal and state laws
  related to web accessibility
• The students then perform a series of
  accessibility inspections on a group of web sites
  that are required under law to be accessible

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Why this approach is better

• Students appreciate the hands-on nature of the
  evaluations
• Students are more engaged, since its useful
  writing for an external audience
• Students experience the relationship between law
  and human-computer interaction
• Students see that their work can have a real
  impact

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How the Intro to HCI class is structured

• Junior/Senior undergraduate level course
• Nearly all students come in with basic web
  programming skills
• Most students come in with no understanding of UD
  or HCI, and no background in the area of
  disability or accessibility
• I introduce the topics of web accessibility and
  public policy
• I ask students to utilize a screenreader
  (download when necessary)

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Students Learn

• Web Accessibility
• Screen readers, captioning, and other types of
  assistive technologies
• WCAG 2.0
• Public Policy
• Section 508
• Maryland IT Non-Visual Access Regulations
• Americans with Disabilities Act
• Students learn 1) who is legally required to be
  accessible and 2) what that means to be accessible

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Practice, practice, practice

• Students cant just do an accessibility
  inspection for the first time and become
  confident and knowledgeable
• You need to do a LOT of exercises first!
• Start with the university home page, then
  departmental web pages, then local organizations
  that students are familiar with
• Encourage questioning and admitting confusion

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Method for the accessibility evaluations

• Use a screen reader, along with a written set of
  instructions on accessibility inspections
• 1. Listen to the web page being read out loud,
  while looking at the page
• 2. Use three common navigation methods
• Headers
• Links lists
• Keyword searching
• 3. Check the web page code for compliance with
  each one of the legal paragraphs
• The evaluation covers more than just blind users

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Categories of potential study

• State or local government web sites
• University web sites
• Including course materials, videos, and lifecycle
  systems (applying to college, registering for
  classes, and applying for graduation)
• Local stores which would fall under legal
  requirements
• Public transportation (busses, subway, etc.)
• Public libraries

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Method for the evaluations

• Each web page gets 5 individual inspections from
  students
• Group meeting is held, where professor leads a
  discussion of the differences in each of the 5
  inspections
• One student is the lead evaluator for that web
  page, and integrates the discussion into a
  meta-evaluation, summarizing all 5 reviews
• Be clear, that each individual evaluation wont
  be perfect
• Also helps teach about why we do multiple
  reviewers

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Outcomes

• The class summarizes the data in a series of
  online spreadsheets
• The professor takes the leadership role on
  writing up the report (students comment on it)
• Final report is sent to appropriate local, state,
  or federal government officials
• Final report is also submitted for potential
  publication in a conference or journal, with all
  students as co-authors

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What happens if it doesnt work?

• If students dont follow through or take the
  evaluations seriously
• No report is written
• No data is sent outside of the class
• But students still get hands-on experience doing
  accessibility inspections
• So you cant PROMISE a report to any outside
  entities before the semester is over with

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Previous Examples

• Job placement and travel web sites (Spring 2010)
• E-commerce web sites where there are web-only
  prices and also physical stores (Fall 2010)
• Maryland Public Library web sites (Spring 2011)
• Airline web sites (Fall 2009 and Fall 2011)
• Maryland state government web sites (Spring 2012)

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Suggestions for educators

• Undergraduate students are not immediately
  experts in something that they just learned, they
  need practice!
• There need to be pedagogical-related goals for
  these projects!
• The professor needs to check, and check, and
  re-check the data!
• Be aware of any potential politics