Accessibility is often only introduced later in computing students' coursework in the classes that focus on creating user interfaces. However, there are various approaches to introduce accessibility earlier in the curriculum. We present a data-driven approach that uses data about accessibility or disability as the context for computing problems such as database searching and inheritance modeling. These examples illustrate for educators how they can include accessibility in a wide range of courses.

There are many disabilities that affect a person's ability to speak. As such, alternatives to verbal communication are often sought. These alternatives are referred to as Augmented and Alternative Communication Systems (AACs). An AAC can be either high-tech or low/no-tech. While many AACs require a user to type out what they want spoken, there are also AACs that rely on symbols for communication. We introduced these topics to students using an assignment that asks students to create the backend for a symbol based AAC device. The device will have a symbol board where there is a page with categories (e.g. food, clothing), which when selected goes to another page with the different items. When an image is selected within the category, the relevant text is spoken aloud. The students are asked to write the relevant methods for the AAC such as determining what images to load and what is spoken aloud. This assignment was used in a data structures course to give students experience working with maps. This assignment is focused for students who are working in Java and comfortable with an object-oriented approach. The real-world context of using devices that are commonly used by people with disabilities that affect their speech was interesting to students. The assignment served as an introduction to certain disabilities and showed students the real-world use of technology to help people communicate.

Incorporating accessibility education into undergraduate computer science (CS) programs is essential for preparing future technology professionals to create inclusive technology. However, many CS programs lack accessibility coverage, often confining it to human-computer interaction (HCI) courses. To address this gap, we developed accessibility assignments seamlessly integrated into core CS courses. We collaborated closely with ten instructors to select and customize these assignments to suit their needs. To evaluate the impact of these assignments, we conducted interviews with instructors and administered surveys and interviews with their students. Our findings indicate significant improvement in students' familiarity with accessibility concepts and confidence in implementation following completion of the assignments. However, their mindset and future interest in accessibility remained the same. Instructors found it straightforward to incorporate these assignments without compromising core computing concepts. In sum, we validated a foundation for effectively resourcing instructors with accessibility teaching materials and increasing their capacity in accessibility knowledge.

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.

Few instructors include accessibility in computing education curriculum despite its importance in the computing field. Prior work on accessibility and CS education vary on what accessibility knowledge is appropriate for future computing professionals and is covered mainly in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and web design courses. In practice, there is no comprehensive list of learning objectives to characterize Accessibility as a competency even though it is an increasingly desired skillset across computing broadly. Moreover, in the soon-to-be-released CS2023, the Accessibility Knowledge Unit is nested within HCI. This placement fails to highlight the role accessibility plays throughout the CS curriculum, nor does it provide sufficient structure to guide CS educators. Thus, these efforts may not be enough to prepare future tech professionals with adequate accessibility skills to meet growing industry demand. We argue that Accessibility should be its own Knowledge Area within the CS curriculum. We present a set of knowledge units with topics and illustrative learning objectives for an Accessibility Knowledge Area in Computing Education. These objectives were produced through synthesizing computing education and accessible computing literature and discussions among the authors, who are subject matter experts in both computing education and accessibility. In this position paper, we make the case that Accessibility should be incorporated into computer science across the curriculum beyond just HCI, and we demonstrate how the knowledge units spans the different facets of computing. In addition to highlighting the cross-curriculum importance of Accessibility, the presented Knowledge Area outline provides structure for future work in creating teaching resources and guiding curricular integration.

Accessibility is an important skillset for computing graduates, however it is commonly not included in computing curriculums. The goal of this workshop is to bring together the relevant stakeholders who are interested in adding accessibility into the curriculum (e.g. computing educators, accessibility researchers, and industry professionals) to discuss what exactly we should be teaching regarding accessibility. The format of the workshop works to support two main goals, to provide a consensus on what should be taught by computing educators regarding accessibility and to provide those who have taught accessibility a chance to share and discuss what they have found to be successful. As a part of this workshop, we plan to draft a white paper that discusses the learning objectives and their relative priorities that were derived in the workshop.

Although some technology companies have made significant strides towards the accessibility of their products, most consumer-facing technology products still pose access barriers to people with disabilities. Prior research has established that accessibility expertise is limited to a small number of practitioners in companies, but we do not know how these practitioners can affect change across a large organization. We sought to address this gap and understand how large companies that produce consumer-facing technologies integrate accessibility into their product lifecycle. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 accessible technology practitioners working at 13 companies. We found accessibility expertise was centered in three main roles within the company: on a central accessibility team, in champions, and in accessibility teams embedded into large product teams. Much of the work of these practitioners centered around education and development of tools and resources to allow designers and developers throughout the organization to implement accessibility. Our study revealed current practices for embedding accessibility in large companies, highlighting the gap between accessibility research and practice. We conclude by presenting areas that need future research to understand how to better support accessibility practice.

Recent interest in accessibility emphasizes including it in computer science curriculum as key to producing effective computing professionals. Despite a general consensus that teaching accessibility in computing curriculum is good, there exist few tools and resources to support instructors in higher education. To better understand the relationship between accessibility in curriculum and research, we conducted a systematic literature review of papers in computing education. We analyzed the papers for the courses accessibility is covered in, the topics that are covered and pedagogies and assessment approaches that are used. Across this body of work, we found a number of key learning objectives commonly covered in computing education research, though it appeared the research did not evenly cover these objectives throughout curricula, nor did the research systematically investigate how learning objectives were integrated. Based on these results, we offer suggestions for future directions of accessibility education research and curriculum building.

The use of technology in educational settings is extremely common. For many visually impaired children, educational settings are the first place they are exposed to the assistive technology that they will need to access mainstream computing devices. Current laws provide support for students to receive training from Teachers of the Visually Impaired (TVIs) on these assistive devices. Therefore, TVIs play an important role in the selection and training of technology. Through our interviews with TVIs, we discovered the factors that impact which technologies they select, how they attempt to mitigate the stigma associated with certain technologies, and the challenges that students face in learning assistive technologies. Through this research, we identified three needs that future research on assistive technology should address: (1) increasing focus on built-in accessibility features, (2) providing support for independent learning and exploration, and (3) creating technologies that can support users with progressive vision loss.

As diversity efforts in computer science begin to recognize disabled programmers as an underrepresented group, we step back to chronicle the experiences of blind programmers in higher education. Through a survey and follow-up interviews with 10 blind programmers, we share reflections and barriers important for the computing education community to understand as we attempt to welcoming cultures for disabled programmers. Our findings illuminated a variety of barriers blind programmers faced in college and the impact that they had on their ability to succeed in the field. We found that barriers permeate all parts of these blind student's' education from accessing the materials and doing the homework to working with professors. These barriers increased feelings of the isolation, decreased motivation especially when tasks were inaccessible, and prevented them from learning all the concepts covered in their degree program.

Blocks-based programming environments, such as Scratch and Blockly, are designed to make learning programming easier for young children. They are increasingly being used for both formal and informal curriculum, such as many of Code.org's hour of code projects. However, these block-based environments rely heavily on visual metaphors and interactions, making them inaccessible for blind children. We describe our initial design of a touchscreen-based blocks environment that is accessible for blind children.

It can be difficult for a blind developer to understand and navigate through a large amount of code quickly, as they are unable to skim as easily as their sighted counterparts. To help blind developers overcome this problem, we present StructJumper, an Eclipse plugin that creates a hierarchical tree based on the nesting structure of a Java class. The programmer can use the TreeView to get an overview of the code structure of the class (including all the methods and control flow statements) and can quickly switch between the TreeView and the Text Editor to get an idea of where they are within the nested structure. To evaluate StructJumper, we had seven blind programmers complete three tasks with and without our tool. We found that the users thought they would use StructJumper and there was a trend that they were faster completing the tasks with StructJumper.

Textbook figures are often converted into a tactile format for access by blind students. These figures are not truly accessible unless the text within the figures is also made accessible. A common solution to access text in a tactile image is to use embossed Braille. We have developed an alternative to Braille that uses QR codes for students who want tactile graphics, but prefer the text in figures be spoken, rather than in Braille. Tactile Graphics with a Voice (TGV) allows text within tactile graphics to be accessible by using a talking QR code reader app on a smartphone. To evaluate TGV, we performed a longitudinal study where ten blind and low vision participants were asked to complete tasks using three alternative picture taking guidance techniques: 1) no guidance, 2) verbal guidance, and 3) finger pointing guidance. Our results show that TGV is an effective way to access text in tactile graphics, especially for those blind users who are not fluent in Braille. In addition, guidance preferences varied with each of the guidance techniques being preferred by at least one participant.

Textbook images are converted into tactile graphics to be made accessible to blind and low vision students. The text labels on these graphics are an important part of the image and must be made accessible as well. The graphics usually have the labels embossed in Braille. However, there are some blind and low vision students who cannot read Braille and need to be able to access the labels in a different manner. We present Tactile Graphics with a Voice, a system that encodes the labels in QR codes, which can be read aloud using the application, TGV, we developed. TGV provides feedback to support the user in scanning the QR code and allows the user to select which QR code to scan when multiple are close together.