Hands-on Accessibility Teaching Training for Computer Science Instructors

Accessibility, the means by which a person with a disability can equitably access, engage with, and use digital technology, is an important topic for tech professions to know, but it is not commonly included in computing curricula. Prior research has shown that professional development opportunities are needed as few instructors are currently including accessibility into their courses and more instructors do not feel they have adequate training to include the information. The lack of accessibility skills in graduates is a current issue for the tech industry, which is facing a skills gap as laws and regulations place an increasing need for the skills. This workshop seeks to close that skills gap by having three instructors with extensive experience in accessibility and integrating it into their classroom partner with Teach Access, a non-profit organization with strong ties to the tech industry that focuses on bridging the accessibility skills gap across academia and industry, to share their experiences and guide instructors through making changes to their own courses. The workshop will first provide instructors with a background about accessibility. Next, we will cover examples of how to integrate accessibility into courses. Finally, instructors will work in small groups based on the courses they are teaching to develop modifications to their own courses.