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0 comments on "Visiting Speaker: Kate Sonka @ Soton, 11 Nov 2024"

On Monday 11th November (12-1pm GMT), Southampton Education School launches a new Education Seminar Series, focused on leadership in education practice, advocacy and the professions. We’re delighted that the inaugural seminar will be presented by visiting speaker Kate Sonka, Executive Director of Teach Access, a US non-profit organisation working with industry, disability advocacy groups and educators to address the digital accessibility skills gap. Kate is visiting the University of Southampton as a guest of our UKRI Teaching Accessibility project. Kate’s presentation will explore how educators can make classrooms and curricula more inclusive and accessible for all. If you would like to attend via Zoom, please contact the Soton Education Office directly via: EducationFOS@soton.ac.uk. This event will include BSL interpretation, and recordings will also be available after the event. We hope to see you there!

0 comments on "Out now: What Every Engineer Needs to Know about Digital Accessibility"

Sarah Horton (our Visiting Fellow) and David Sloan have recently published the landmark book ‘What Every Engineer Should Know About Digital Accessibility‘ Synthesised from decades of experience working at the cutting-edge of digital accessibility practice, Horton and Sloan distil the key principles, methodologies and approaches that every engineer needs in their tool kit. What Every Engineer Should Know About Accessibility delivers a perfect balance of conceptual and practical content, for a deep dive, or for reference. It also brings in expert voices from the international vanguard of accessibility – advocates, academics and industry leaders. The result is a range of perspectives that highlight the innovation and richness that is at the heart of engineering for accessibility; and the real-world harm that can and does result from digital exclusion. For a product, service, platform or tool to be truly excellent, it must be excellent for everyone. In this ground-breaking book, Horton and Sloan show how this excellence can be engineered for all, with disabled people at the centre.

We heartily recommend this book – and there is a 20% discount available [code: EFLY03] on the £29.99 cover price available from Routledge at time of writing. Congratulations to Sarah H and David on this excellent work!

0 comments on "22/8/24: Teach Access and IAAP Webinar: ‘What Everyone Should Know About Digital Accessibility’"

On Thursday 22nd August, 4pm BST / 11am EDT, join the International Association of Accessibility Professionals and Teach Access for a free 1-hour Webinar focussed on the foundational principles of digital accessibility, with Sarah Horton and David Sloan.

To register: https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/s/webinar-details?id=a0ATn000000VOR3MAO

Panel speakers include:

  • Sarah Horton: UX and Accessibility Strategy Lead at Harvard Web Publishing
  • David Sloan: Chief Accessibility Officer at Vispero® and User Experience Practice Manager at TPGi
  • Dr. Yasmine Elglaly: Associate Professor at Western Washington University and leader of the @KIND lab
  • Dr. Sarah Lewthwaite (University of Southampton – and Principal Investigator of the Teaching Accessibility project).
  • Meenakshi ‘Meena’ Das: Software Engineer at Microsoft focusing on creating inclusive frontend experiences.

The session will be moderated by Samantha Lynch Johnson, Digital Accessibility Engineering Manager at CVS Health. This promises to be an excellent webinar, offering diverse perspectives on ways to establish digital accessibility effectively in a range of contexts. We hope to see you there!

0 comments on "New paper: Digital Accessibility Education in Context"

We have a new Open Access research paper now available in ACM’s Transactions on Accessibility Computing (TACCESS). The paper ‘Digital Accessibility Education in Context: Expert Perspectives on Building Capacity in Academia and the Workplace‘ considers the socio-cultural conditions in which accessibility teaching and learning takes place, the institutional and organisational challenges that fundamentally shape the nature of accessibility education. The paper has ‘Just Accepted’ status, with formal copy to be updated soon.

Abstract

The social model of disability, accessibility legislation, and the digital transformation spurred by COVID-19 expose a lack of accessibility capacity in the workforce, indicating persistent gaps in academic and professional education. We adopt a socio-cultural lens to examine how the context of education and training influences teaching and learning in university and workplace sectors, and how expert educators manage and negotiate these contextual factors to build accessibility capacity. This paper reports qualitative research with 55 experienced educators using expert panel method and focus groups. Analysis highlights the important disconnects and contextual challenges that educators must navigate and negotiate to affect and embed cultural change. We find that faculty and workplace cultures frequently perpetuate precarity in accessibility education, individualising the responsibility to ‘heroes’ or ‘champions’, while disciplinary and role-based silos limit the scope for raising awareness and developing widescale competency. Conversely, centres of excellence and communities of practice can cultivate and sustain links between education and research, engage expert users, and promote interdisciplinary and cross-role learning environments, where accessibility is increasingly recognised as a shared endeavour. We conclude that greater collaboration between academia and industry can enhance pedagogical understanding, to transform accessibility educational practices and build and sustain capacity for the future.

Cite: Coverdale, A. Lewthwaite, S., and Horton, S. (2024) Digital Accessibility Education in Context: Expert Perspectives on Building Capacity in Academia and the Workplace. Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS).

0 comments on "New research: Workplace approaches to teaching digital accessibility"

We’re delighted to announce the publication of our open access research paper ‘Workplace approaches to teaching digital accessibility: establishing a common foundation of awareness and understanding‘ in Frontiers in Computer Science. This paper was published on 18th October 2023, and is part of a growing research topic Advancing Digital Accessibility in Academic and Workplace Education.

Abstract

Accessibility in the digital world is a shared responsibility, requiring a common foundation of awareness and understanding. However, little is known about how digital accessibility can be effectively taught, and research on workplace teaching and training in accessibility is highly scarce, despite its crucial role in building accessibility capacity in the workforce. This paper considers workplace accessibility pedagogy to focus on aspects of foundational education, characterized as a pedagogically informed set of teaching strategies, cultivated through organizational and workplace cultures and practices. It contributes an analysis and synthesis of pedagogic research with 55 experienced accessibility educators in higher education and the workplace, in the UK and internationally, drawing on insights from expert panel methods including interviews, forums and focus groups. We find that digital accessibility is identified as a necessary core competency for an inclusive digital world. We examine the prevalent approaches that experienced workplace educators use to establish foundational awareness and understanding of accessibility to enable learners to achieve core learning objectives. We report the challenges that workplace educators face, negotiating different contexts and working practices and adapting foundational learning experiences to meet the pedagogic demands of different roles, responsibilities, and specialist advancement. In doing so, we demonstrate that establishing a common foundation of awareness and understanding is the basis for a pedagogic framework for digital accessibility education, with relevance for both workplace and academic settings.

Citation: Lewthwaite S, Horton S and Coverdale A (2023) Workplace approaches to teaching digital accessibility: establishing a common foundation of awareness and understanding. Front. Comput. Sci. 5:1155864. doi: 10.3389/fcomp.2023.1155864

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0 comments on "Project update: SIGACCESS newsletter October"

Back in April, our paper ‘Teaching Accessibility as a Shared Endeavour’ was shortlisted for the Best Communication prize at Web4All 2022. As a result we were invited to write for the October SIGACCESS newsletter – the special interest group on accessible computing. You can read the full report on our project rationale and methods in our article ‘Researching Pedagogy in Digital Accessibility Education‘. Our piece introduces the context of our project, the drivers of our work, our methods and approaches, as well as some of the key challenges in the field for accessibility educators. We also reflect on how pedagogic research methods can make a sustained contribution to computing education practice through research outputs, and a methodological process designed to stimulate dialogue, networks, reflexive teaching and learning development.

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0 comments on "New paper and presentation at the Web4All 2022 Conference"

We were delighted to present a paper at the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A’22) on 25 April.

With the theme ‘Accessibility in a Hybrid World’, the conference took place virtually, presenting a range of excellent keynotes, technical and communication papers, the Doctoral Consortium and the Accessibility Challenge.

Titled Teaching accessibility as a shared endeavour: building capacity across academic and workplace contexts, our paper was nominated for Best Communications Paper.

Abstract

The social model of disability, accessibility legislation, and the digital transformation spurred by COVID-19 expose a lack of accessibility capacity in the digital workforce, indicating persistent gaps in academic and professional education. This paper reports qualitative research with 30 expert educators in academia and the workplace to consider the relationship between these sectors in building accessibility capacity. Their insights highlight important disconnects and contextual challenges that educators must manage and navigate. Digital accessibility is increasingly recognised as a shared endeavour in the workplace. However, in academia, faculty cultures and disciplinary silos can result in responsibility for accessibility defaulting to individuals. To prepare accessibility-skilled professionals, cross-role education and training is necessary across disciplines. With a focus on teaching and training practices, we highlight the need for academia and the workplace to learn from each other and adapt together to generate pedagogies that will better prepare learners for accessibility practice.

An open access Authors Draft is available via the Southampton University e-prints repository.

Please cite the paper as follows:

Coverdale, A. Lewthwaite, S., and Horton, S. 2022. Teaching accessibility as a shared endeavour: building capacity across academic and workplace contexts. In Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference (W4A ’22). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 4, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3493612.3520451

0 comments on "Launching a new forum for insights and perspectives on Digital Accessibility Education"

The Teaching Accessibility research team is collaborating with Teach Access in the United States and accessibility researchers, educators, advocates, and professionals worldwide to publish a research topic in the Human-Media Interaction section of Frontiers in Computer Science, an open access journal. Our research topic is Advancing Digital Accessibility in Academic and Workplace Education. Submissions are open for articles covering original research as well as general commentary and opinion pieces. If you have insights and perspectives on digital accessibility teaching and learning that you’d like to share, select the Participate button on the Research Topic page to provide your contact details, so we can keep you updated.

Origins of the Research Topic

In our work researching how accessibility is taught and learned in academic and workplace contexts, we have had the benefit of hearing from a global community of researchers, educators, advocates, and professionals working to build digital accessibility capacity through education. We’ve heard about how the topic is (or isn’t) embedded in computer science, information science, software engineering, design, and other relevant disciplines. We’ve heard about the challenges of addressing the complexity of accessibility topics, building disability awareness and ethical practices alongside technical and procedural knowledge and skills. The need for digital accessibility education is clear, as is the investment among educators in developing effective pedagogy to address the unique challenges of the topic. But digital accessibility is relatively undefined and underdeveloped as a subspeciality in academic and workplace education programs. We see an opportunity to develop greater maturity in digital accessibility by setting up a forum for sharing perspectives and approaches to building digital accessibility capacity through education.

Why Frontiers?

In choosing a forum for generating interest and excitement, and building knowledge about digital accessibility education, we wanted a platform that would generate impact, allowing open access to new viewpoints from around the world. Previously, Sarah Horton on our team contributed to the Web Accessibility research topic for the same journal and section. As of this writing, the research topic page and articles combined represent 25,504 views, and Sarah’s opinion article, Empathy Cannot Sustain Action in Technology Accessibility, has 5,728 total views. This type of impact is substantial, particularly for an academic publication.

Frontiers is an Open Access platform, and articles are available to anyone without login, payment, or advertising. With open access, authors, institutions, and funders cover publishing costs through fees. Frontiers has a Fee Support Program to assist authors who have limited or no funding to cover publication fees. You can learn more about Frontiers and open access journals, and get more details about the journal, fees, and the editorial process. If you have questions about publication fees or any other aspect of the publishing process, please contact the Frontiers Editorial Office at computerscience@frontiersin.org for assistance.

Next Steps

We have a team of topic editors, with Sarah Lewthwaite, Sarah Horton and Andy Coverdale from the University of Southampton, UK, Kate Sonka from Teach Access, USA, Gottfried Zimmermann from Stuttgart Media University, Germany, Yasmine Elglaly from Western Washington University, USA, and Scott Hollier from Edith Cowan University, Australia.

Submission deadlines are:

  • Abstracts: We are accepting abstracts starting now through 1 July 2022. Note that you are not required to submit an abstract to contribute.
  • Manuscripts: We are accepting manuscripts from now through 31 December 2022.

Reviews are ongoing, with reviewers assigned to manuscripts as they are submitted. Articles are published once they are approved for publication by the reviewers and editors, which is much more dynamic than traditional academic publications.

If you are interested in participating, enter your details by selecting the Participate button on the Research Topic page. This will add your name and email to the system, where you will receive notifications about deadlines. And please contact us individually or through the TeachingAccessibility@soton.ac.uk email if you have any questions or concerns.

We are very excited to work with experts worldwide to forge a path toward increasing digital accessibility capacity through education, building engagement with digital accessibility, and supporting disability inclusion in the digital world.

0 comments on "Celebrating GAAD with Accessibility Teachers"

GAAD

The purpose of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, or GAAD, is to raise awareness about digital accessibility and disability inclusion. For this year’s event, on May 20th, the Teaching Accessibility research team partnered with the US-based initiative Teach Access to host an international coffee hour, bringing together educators from around the world to discuss the unique and rewarding work of teaching accessibility.

Our Accessibility Teachers’ Coffee Hour guests came from 16 universities and colleges, in the UK, Ireland, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Australia, and the US. They provided viewpoints of both aspiring and experienced accessibility educators, teaching accessibility topics in education, design, and engineering courses and providing outreach, support, and mentoring.

We started the event with a plenary session and then split into four breakout sessions to discuss the following topics:

  • The challenges of teaching accessibility
  • Our values and approaches
  • Strategies for student engagement
  • Teaching and learning tasks and activities

We reconvened for reports back from the groups and wrapped up with a discussion of ways forward for accessibility education.

Several important themes emerged from the sessions. 

The values discussion led to clarity around the societal imperative to teach accessibility, because digital accessibility is key to disability rights and disability inclusion and enabling everyone to contribute to society.

Challenges inherent in teaching accessibility include complexity and scope, and the tension between covering complex, multi-faceted accessibility topics in an already overloaded curriculum. Deficiencies include a lack of awareness and understanding, since students and teachers are unfamiliar with disability and how people with disabilities use technology, and a lack of visibility and urgency, as the need for accessibility skills is not visible and prioritized.

Educators overcome these challenges using various strategies, tasks, and activities. They seek out ways to embed accessibility into culture and practice, both at a strategic level, making accessibility a core value, and at a practical level, weaving accessibility into courses and activities. They find ways to engage diverse perspectives through activities like user research with people with disabilities and projects aimed at addressing accessibility needs. And they show the career impact of accessibility knowledge and skills through role modeling and mentoring with accessibility professionals.

Participants contributed to lively discussions and shared resources, including the growing Universal Design into University Curriculum (UDUC) repository of accessibility teaching resources at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the MOOCs for Accessibility Partnership (MOOCAP) Open Educational Resources, developed by an EU partnership of eight European universities.

We look forward to continuing our discussions with accessibility teachers worldwide and sharing resources to enhance accessibility education. Please subscribe to our newsletter for announcements of future events and project updates. You can also subscribe to updates from Teach Access by completing their Contact Us form.

Teach Access
University of Southampton

0 comments on "New Research Fellows join Teaching Accessibility project"

We’re delighted to announce that Dr Andy Coverdale and Sarah Horton have joined the Teaching Accessibility project.

Following a highly competitive recruitment process, Sarah and Andy were appointed in January. Each brings a wealth of expertise and experience to bear on the project, to kickstart the New Year.

Dr Andy Coverdale is a Research Fellow in Southampton Education School with recent experience on the ‘Self-build Social Care‘ research project, using inclusive and participatory methods to work collaboratively with people with learning disabilities and their allies. He is currently working with the National Centre for Research Methods on their project ‘Changing Research Practice: Undertaking social research in the context of Covid-19’.

Andy draws on over ten years’ experience of working with, supporting and teaching people with learning disabilities, including 4 years as Learning Manager with the charity Inspire Nottingham.  He has previously conducted research in the educational use of digital media and technology through his work with iRes at Falmouth University and the Visual Learning Lab at the University of Nottingham. He completed his MA in Educational Research Methods and PhD in Education at the University of Nottingham. His thesis examined the role of social and participatory media in doctoral education.

Sarah Horton began as a designer and developer in 1991 at Yale University, making instructional CD- ROMs on cardiothoracic imaging. She was an instructional technologist at Dartmouth College, helping faculty across disciplines use technology to teach. Later she worked at the institutional level, as web director at Dartmouth and then strategy lead on Harvard University’s web transformation project.

As an accessibility engineer with The Paciello Group, Sarah performed design reviews and audits of websites, applications, apps, and devices, and conducted user research and usability studies. She was lead for TPG’s strategy services, providing strategic consulting to teams and organizations seeking to incorporate accessibility into culture and practice. She has worked with a broad range of companies and organizations, gaining insights into how accessibility is currently managed and manifested in our digital world.

Welcome, Andy and Sarah!