Teaching Accessibility & Universal Design Concepts Through theUse of Public Policy ProjectsDr. Jonathan Lazar

Dept of Computer and Information Sciences and Universal Usability Laboratory

Towson University

How do you structure a research paper assignment in a way that it:

Is interesting to the students? Is unlikely to simply be copied from the

Internet? Will actually help students understand

concepts in a hands-on way? Will perform something useful for society?

And also deal with the fact that… Much of the policymaking that occurs in the

area of IT accessibility, is done using LITTLE TO NO EMPIRICAL DATA!!!

Policymakers are starving for data to understand what’s going on!

Old Research Paper Assignments

Human-Computer Interaction undergraduate class All Information Systems and Information Technology

majors Students chose their own topic within HCI 10-12 page paper With citations and references

Comic from http://www.anthonyarroyodotcom.com

New approach to research papers Class-wide public policy projects Students learn:

1. international guidelines related to web accessibility

2. how to evaluate web sites for accessibility 3. specific details of federal and state laws related

to web accessibility The students then perform a series of

accessibility inspections on a group of web sites that are required under law to be accessible

Why this approach is better Students appreciate the hands-on nature of

the evaluations Students are more engaged, since it’s useful

writing for an external audience Students experience the relationship

between law and human-computer interaction

Students see that their work can have a real impact

How the “Intro to HCI” class is structured Junior/Senior undergraduate level course Nearly all students come in with basic web

programming skills Most students come in with no understanding

of UD or HCI, and no background in the area of disability or accessibility

I introduce the topics of web accessibility and public policy

I ask students to utilize a screenreader (download when necessary)

Students Learn Web Accessibility

Screen readers, captioning, and other types of assistive technologies

WCAG 2.0 Public Policy

Section 508 Maryland IT Non-Visual Access Regulations Americans with Disabilities Act

Students learn 1) who is legally required to be accessible and 2) what that means to be accessible

Practice, practice, practice Students can’t just do an accessibility

inspection for the first time and become confident and knowledgeable

You need to do a LOT of exercises first! Start with the university home page, then

departmental web pages, then local organizations that students are familiar with

Encourage questioning and admitting confusion

Method for the accessibility evaluations Use a screen reader, along with a written set of

instructions on accessibility inspections 1. Listen to the web page being read out loud,

while looking at the page 2. Use three common navigation methods:

Headers Links lists Keyword searching

3. Check the web page code for compliance with each one of the legal paragraphs

The evaluation covers more than just blind users

Categories of potential study

State or local government web sites University web sites

Including course materials, videos, and lifecycle systems (applying to college, registering for classes, and applying for graduation)

Local stores which would fall under legal requirements

Public transportation (busses, subway, etc.) Public libraries

Method for the evaluations Each web page gets 5 individual inspections

from students Group meeting is held, where professor leads a

discussion of the differences in each of the 5 inspections

One student is the “lead” evaluator for that web page, and integrates the discussion into a meta-evaluation, summarizing all 5 reviews

Be clear, that each individual evaluation won’t be perfect Also helps teach about why we do multiple reviewers

Outcomes

The class summarizes the data in a series of online spreadsheets

The professor takes the leadership role on writing up the report (students comment on it)

Final report is sent to appropriate local, state, or federal government officials

Final report is also submitted for potential publication in a conference or journal, with all students as co-authors

What happens if it doesn’t work? If students don’t follow through or take the

evaluations seriously No report is written No data is sent outside of the class But students still get hands-on experience doing

accessibility inspections So you can’t PROMISE a report to any outside

entities before the semester is over with

Previous Examples

Job placement and travel web sites (Spring 2010)E-commerce web sites where there are web-only prices and also physical stores (Fall 2010)Maryland Public Library web sites (Spring 2011)Airline web sites (Fall 2009 and Fall 2011)Maryland state government web sites (Spring 2012)

Suggestions for educators Undergraduate students are not immediately

experts in something that they just learned, they need practice!

There need to be pedagogical-related goals for these projects!

The professor needs to check, and check, and re-check the data!

Be aware of any potential politics