What do we know about effective methods for teaching accessibility? This presentation given at the W4A conference in Montreal shares initial findings from a review of published work on pedagogy and accessibility, with a focus on computing science.

1. Exploring pedagogical culture for
accessibility education in Computing
Science
Sarah Lewthwaite @slewth
David Sloan @sloandr
W4A 2016, Montreal, April 11th 2016

2. Research context
• There are growing industry demands for accessibility
skills and knowledge
– Teachaccess.org, IAAP certification
• Socio-technical focus of accessibility presents specific
educational challenges
• This means more focus on quality of accessibility
education
• Lots of discussion on what to teach…

3. …but our focus is on the question of
how to teach accessibility

4. Finding out about accessibility
pedagogy
• Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK): what do we
know about effective ways to teach a specific subject?
• Examine the literature focusing on teaching of
accessibility in computing science:
– 23 papers, 3 introductions to thematic sessions, 2
posters, 1 PhD thesis
– Initial analysis of emerging themes from papers found

5. Characteristics of accessibility learning
and teaching
• Literature is small, dominated by first-person reflections
• Initial themes include:
– Using tools, standards
– Problem/project-based learning
– Embedding in HCI
– Raising empathy
– Involving people with disabilities

6. Limited pedagogical content
knowledge.
No significant pedagogical culture for
accessibility…yet.

7. Challenges to the field
• Changing nature of accessibility
• Visibility of accessibility in the curriculum
– Integrate or specialise?
• Focus on standards can limit evolution of pedagogy
• Limited discussion, comparison, development of
methods means limited pedagogical culture and PCK
• Capacity-building

8. Building a Pedagogical Culture
• Engaging with pedagogical literature, sharing results
• Build a community-level discussion
• Rewarding enhanced quality of teaching
• Creating diverse research and teaching spaces

9. Next steps
• Deeper thematic analysis of the literature
• Maintaining a living collection of the literature
– Current location: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/388799/
• Exploring how we can document and share effective
teaching methods
• Build links with related project at RIT

10. Thank you!
@slewth
www.southampton.ac.uk/education/about/staff/sel1d14.pag
e
@sloandr
www.paciellogroup.com