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Infusing Accessibility into Programming Courses

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Published:08 May 2021Publication History

ABSTRACT

Within computing education, accessibility topics are usually taught in Human Computer Interaction and Web Design courses. Few have included accessibility in programming courses as an add-on topic. We studied assignments that infuse accessibility into programming topics without impacting the core computing learning objectives. We present two examples, assignments that can be used in Introductory Programming and Object Oriented Programming courses. Both assignments cover accessibility in addition to the primary computing topic taught. We included the two assignments in two courses for two semesters, conducting surveys and interviews to understand the impact of the assignments on students’ learning of accessibility and computing. Our findings show this approach has potential to satisfy accessibility and programming learning objectives without overwhelming the students, though more work is needed to make sure that students are clear on the relationship between the assignments and technical accessibility knowledge.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Conferences
        CHI EA '21: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
        May 2021
        2965 pages
        ISBN:9781450380959
        DOI:10.1145/3411763

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        • Published: 8 May 2021

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