How Are We Teaching and Dealing with Accessibility? A Survey From Switzerland

Abstract

The need to better understand how to support and provide accessibility has increased dramatically in recent years, whether in industry or education. Higher education institutions have an essential role in raising awareness of how important accessibility is and, at the same time, can provide students with examples of good practice in building inclusive experiences. This work aims to assess the state of the art of accessibility in Switzerland, from teaching to administrative staff. Our findings show that the majority (77%) do not teach accessibility because it is not a core part of their courses and 21% declared to don't know enough to teach. 62,5% of who is teaching accessibility teach to evaluate web pages accessibility standards and heuristics and half of them help understanding technology barriers faced by people with disabilities. Likewise, our administrative staff respondents had four times more guidelines to deal with physical access than with technology enhancements. We also found out that with the COVID-19 outbreak, our instructors mainly used extra software and were more available online. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Accessibility theory, concepts and paradigms; • Accessibility technologies; • Social and professional topics → People with disabilities.