Accessibility as a First-Class Concern in Teaching GUIs and Software Engineering (Abstract Only)

Abstract

Ensuring that software systems are accessible to users with disabilities is historically neglected but increasingly important for professional software developers. It is imperative that students are familiar with accessible practices to support this often-overlooked form of diversity. We suggest that including accessibility topics when teaching user-interface development skills is a low-effort task that can directly support teaching core software development principles such as "separation of concerns" and "standards compliance." In this lightning talk we describe our initial efforts to integrate accessibility and accessible design as "first-class" topics into our department's required course on web development, including specific examples of concepts covered, classroom activities, and assignments. We also discuss suggestions for how to potentially integrate accessibility topics into other computer science courses which include any kinds of front-end user interfaces. The goal of this talk is to promote awareness of accessibility concerns, demonstrate the ease by which educators can include such material, and encourage discussion about how to engage students in such diversity considerations throughout the curriculum.