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A general education course on universal access, disability, technology and society

Published: 25 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

This paper reports on a General Education course called "Universal Access: Disability, Technology and Society" that enables students from all majors to learn more about disability and the issues that surround it, as well as how Assistive Technology facilitates effective participation of those with disabilities in society. Guest lectures, meant to give the students different perspectives on disability, are integral part of the course. Guest lecturers include experts in disability studies, professionals working with people with disabilities, and persons with disability. To gain practical knowledge, the students carry out group projects or volunteering activities that involves people with disabilities. Since its first introduction in 2006, the course had always filled to capacity. A survey with 75 students conducted in Winter 2010 revealed that students felt that their knowledge about universal access and disabilities had improved significantly, and that they had become aware of accessibility in everyday life.

References

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Petrie, H., Edwards, A. 2006. Inclusive design and assistive technology as part of the HCI curriculum. In Proceedings of HCI Educators Workshop'2006, Limerick, Ireland, 23--24 March, 2006.
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Smith, C.P. 2008. Motivation and Personality: Handbook of Thematic Content Analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
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Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. 1994. Grounded theory methodology: An overview. In Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds) Handbook of qualitative research. Sage Publications, Inc, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 273--285.
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Timms, M., McHugh, S., O'Carrol, A., James, T. 1997. Assessing impact of disability awareness training using the Attitudes Towards Disabled Persons Scale (ATDP - Form 0). International Journal of Rehabilitation Research, 20(3), 1997, 319--324.
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Waller, A., Hanson, V. L., and Sloan, D. 2009. Including accessibility within and beyond undergraduate computing courses. In Proceedings of the 11th international ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Pittsburgh, PA, October 25--28, 2009). ASSETS'09. ACM, New York, NY, 155--162.

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  • (2025)Enhancing Accessibility in Software Engineering Projects with Large Language Models (LLMs)Proceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701841(25-31)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
  • (2025)Accessibility Insights from Student's Software Engineering ProjectsProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701839(39-45)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
  • (2025)Sprint to Inclusion: Embedding Accessibility Sprint in a Software Engineering CourseProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701838(32-38)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
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      cover image ACM Conferences
      ASSETS '10: Proceedings of the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
      October 2010
      346 pages
      ISBN:9781605588810
      DOI:10.1145/1878803
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Publication History

      Published: 25 October 2010

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      Author Tags

      1. disability awareness
      2. general education
      3. undergraduate education
      4. universal access

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      • (2025)Enhancing Accessibility in Software Engineering Projects with Large Language Models (LLMs)Proceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701841(25-31)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
      • (2025)Accessibility Insights from Student's Software Engineering ProjectsProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701839(39-45)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
      • (2025)Sprint to Inclusion: Embedding Accessibility Sprint in a Software Engineering CourseProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701838(32-38)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
      • (2024)Teaching Accessibility in Different Disciplines: Topics, Approaches, Resources, ChallengesProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3688553(1-4)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
      • (2024)Reflections on Incorporating Digital Accessibility in an Operating Systems CourseProceedings of the 2024 on ACM Virtual Global Computing Education Conference V. 110.1145/3649165.3690127(179-185)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2024
      • (2024)Teaching Digital Accessibility to Industry Professionals using the Community of Practice framework: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640083(191-200)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
      • (2024)Teaching Digital Accessibility in Computing Education: Views of Educators in IndiaProceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3632620.3671122(222-232)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
      • (2024)Motivated by Inclusion: Understanding Students' Empathy and Motivation to Design Accessibly Across a Spectrum of DisabilitiesProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630894(680-686)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
      • (2024)Mapping Accessibility Assignments into Core Computer Science Topics: An Empirical Study with Interviews and Surveys of Instructors and StudentsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642097(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
      • (2024)A Gamification-Based Tool to Promote Accessible DesignIntelligent Sustainable Systems10.1007/978-981-99-8031-4_33(373-390)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2024
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