RE: [SPAM: 44.012] Re: courses for designers and developers.

Dear All,

I think there are two issues in this, one the issue of teaching accessibility and secondly the teaching of accessibility standards. As standards are often not considered an academic resource and many academics are not fully conversant with standards.

I have done some research on the teaching of standards but it was difficult as responses were only forthcoming from academics who did teach standards – rather than from those who didn’t. The report Whitney, Gill and Keith, Suzette and Selvaraj, Nallini and Maguire, Martin and Nicolle, Colette (2014) Employable knowledge: benchmarking education about standardization in the UK. British Standards Institute, London, UK is available from me – if anybody is interested.

I am also interested in sharing ideas on how we can develop the teaching of standards.

Regards
Gill

.

From: Jutta Treviranus [mailto:jutta.trevira@gmail.com]
Sent: 09 November 2016 01:46
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Cc: Dean Birkett | AssistiveWare; Boyd, Amanda (UK - Belfast); Ludovic GIAMBIASI; Sean Murphy (seanmmur); Matthew Putland; Alan Bridgeman
Subject: [SPAM: 44.012] Re: courses for designers and developers.

Apologies for coming so late to the conversation, thank you Alan for the mention of our program.

In our 2 year Masters program in Inclusive Design we definitely cover Web accessibility from the very start. Our program has as diverse a group of students as possible in each cohort, including many students that require Web accessibility and have personal experience with assistive technology. The students are co-designers of their own education. This means that any documents, Web sites, apps or other things they design, develop, share with their class or hand in, need to be designed accessibly or their classmates won’t be able to access them. This means that accessible design goes beyond theory or practice application to real application with users that provide immediate constructive critique. It is a degree in design with an emphasis on UX but includes developers, policy designers and many other disciplines as well. The students frequently work in teams to arrive at inclusive designs. The graduates in the program find work in a huge variety of fields all over the world that require Web accessibility. We now have our 6th cohort. Here is some further information.
http://www.ocadu.ca/academics/graduate-studies/inclusive-design.htm

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/were-all-misfit-consumers-we-need-inclusive-design/article31587796/

http://torontoist.com/2013/09/i-want-your-job-jutta-treviranus-director-of-the-inclusive-design-research-centre/


I think it is critical to learn about accessibility when you are first learning your profession so that it becomes a habit and part of your professional conventions or habits.

Jutta


Jutta Treviranus
Professor and Director
Inclusive Design Research Centre
OCAD University
@juttatrevira

On Nov 8, 2016, at 7:28 AM, Alan Bridgeman <a.bridgeman@hotmail.com<mailto:a.bridgeman@hotmail.com>> wrote:

Hello,

I seem to be pretty late to this email chain and I'm meirly a fourth year computer scoence undergrad at the University of Manitoba. But I wanted to through my two cents in since I'm going to be trying to convince the university I attend (University of Manitoba) and hopefully the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) which as I understand is the closest thing to a computer science program regulatory body in Canada. To include this kind of matterial in our computer scoence curriculim(s).

Now I know the OCAD University Inclusive Design Research Centre (IDRC) does education (Master degrees) on this type of stuff but I can't speak to this other then to say I've heard good things. Here is their website: http://idrc.ocadu.ca


Below I've included a copy of a documrnt I've written as a rough first draft proposal (thats been reviewed by a few people with decent standing) specifically for the purpose of convincing the computer science departmemy to include this kind of matterial in the University of Manitoba program. I don't know if it will help with the specific issues at hand but feel free to use it for your own ends or if you have time I'd really like the feedback on it as well.

Thanks for all your time.

Regards,
Alan Bridgeman

-------- Original message --------
From: Dean Birkett | AssistiveWare <d.birkett@assistiveware.com<mailto:d.birkett@assistiveware.com>>
Date: 2016-11-08 5:44 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: "Boyd, Amanda (UK - Belfast)" <aboyd@deloitte.co.uk<mailto:aboyd@deloitte.co.uk>>
Cc: Ludovic GIAMBIASI <ludovic.giambiasi@gmail.com<mailto:ludovic.giambiasi@gmail.com>>, "Sean Murphy (seanmmur)" <seanmmur@cisco.com<mailto:seanmmur@cisco.com>>, Matthew Putland <matthew.putland@mediaaccess.org.au<mailto:matthew.putland@mediaaccess.org.au>>, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Re: courses for designers and developers.

I find a lot of the online Accessibility courses tend to be developer focussed. The one Matthew mentioned is broader, and you don’t hit any code at all. although I wouldn’t say it is for UXers either - it’s more of a broad intro, and the coursework revolves around accessibility testing & creating accessible content (videos).

The free MOOC from The University of Southampton (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/digital-accessibility) is also quite broad, and it introduces you to issues faced by people with various impairments, but there are no real tests as such.

To date I’ve yet to find a course that really covers Accessibility from a UX perspective, which is a real shame, but I can totally recommend a workshop with Derek Featherstone of Simply Accessible, he helped me (a UX Designer with  a keen interest in Accessibility) to come at design problems through an Accessibility lens to create better solutions.

Best
Dean

On 8 Nov 2016, at 11:20, Boyd, Amanda (UK - Belfast) <aboyd@deloitte.co.uk<mailto:aboyd@deloitte.co.uk>> wrote:

Hi,

As a web developer – accessibility is a fundamental aspect of the web. If we are teaching our students front-end web development – accessibility should be core to this.

It was covered alittle in my university course in UK, all our sites had to be W3C accessibility checked althought I felt the aria labels and voiceover accessibility could have been covered more.

Teaching students to solve the accessibility problems they run into when they are coding – for example – how the structure of their code regarding H1-H6 and the layout of forms could impact the page navigation of the user tabbing through while using Voiceover.

If we teach them to adopt this while coding – they will adopt these considerations into their projects/apps before starting.

Everyone always leave accessibility to the end of projects as an after thought :(

Many Thanks,
Amanda Boyd


Please consider the environment before printing.

From: Ludovic GIAMBIASI <ludovic.giambiasi@gmail.com<mailto:ludovic.giambiasi@gmail.com>>
Date: Tuesday, 8 November 2016 09:49
To: "Sean Murphy (seanmmur)" <seanmmur@cisco.com<mailto:seanmmur@cisco.com>>, Matthew Putland <matthew.putland@mediaaccess.org.au<mailto:matthew.putland@mediaaccess.org.au>>, "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: courses for designers and developers.
Resent-From: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Tuesday, 8 November 2016 09:50

Hi,

In all my interventions (university, private school, etc.) I include accessibility and UX courses. Sometimes, courses are dedicated to accessibility, otherwise in all programming courses, I include accessibility  part and ux also...

I'm in France...

Ludo,

Le mar. 8 nov. 2016 à 07:40, Sean Murphy (seanmmur) <seanmmur@cisco.com<mailto:seanmmur@cisco.com>> a écrit :
Matthew


Thank you for the response. The information you have shared in relation to the South Australian course I was aware of and should have mention it in my original post. The info you shared in relation to the offerings from your university appears to be the status quo for Australia.


If UX and developers are not getting their teeth into this area of development and design at an University level. Then it is a uphill battle to change things without people repeating themselves over and over. Thus why I raised the question.


Sean Murphy
Accessibility Software engineer
seanmmur@cisco.com<mailto:seanmmur@cisco.com>
Tel: +61 2 8446 7751<tel:+61%202%208446%207751>      Cisco Systems, Inc.
The Forum 201 Pacific Highway
ST LEONARDS
2065
Australia
cisco.com<http://cisco.com/>
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This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, use, distribution or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive for the recipient), please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this message.

From: Matthew Putland [mailto:matthew.putland@mediaaccess.org.au<mailto:matthew.putland@mediaaccess.org.au>]
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2016 4:57 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: RE: courses for designers and developers.

> I am wondering if Universities, Third party trainers and the like cover accessibility in their development and UX courses? If so, is there any resources for different countries to indicate which training organisations that cover this in their courses and what level of quality the training is?

Hi Sean Murphy,

From my own experience and talking with others, Accessibility training in web dev and UX courses are few and far between. My own I.T Degree which I completed at the end of 2015 only discussed accessibility for 3 marks of a single assignment, and that’s in my entire degree. My UX designer colleague from the University of Sydney had a lecture on accessibility, but of course 1 lecture isn’t enough to go to a very deep level.

There is however an online 6-week University-level course that my organization runs called the “Professional Certificate of Web Accessibility<http://www.unisa.edu.au/education-arts-and-social-sciences/communication-international-studies-and-languages/pcwa/>” at the University of South Australia, which is completely self-promoting but may assist with what you’re looking for.

I’m unsure if there’s any collaboration between countries on what is taught accessibility-wise, but I’d say there’s still a sad lack of accessibility training in general for these courses.

Cheers,

Matthew Putland
Senior Analyst, Digital Accessibility | Media Access Australia
61 Kitchener Avenue, Victoria Park WA 6100
Tel: 08 9311 8230 (direct) 02 9212 6242<tel:02%2092%2012%2062%2042> (main) Mobile: 0431 924 288 Web: www.mediaaccess.org.au<http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/>

My working hours are from 11am-7:30pm AEST (8am-4:30pm AWST).

Media Access Australia<http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/> - inclusion through technology and Access iQ®<http://www.accessiq.org/> - creating a web without limits. Follow us on Twitter @mediaaccessaus<https://twitter.com/mediaaccessaus>@AccessiQ<https://twitter.com/accessiq>

From: Sean Murphy (seanmmur) [mailto:seanmmur@cisco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 8 November 2016 9:13 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: courses for designers and developers.

I am wondering if Universities, Third party trainers and the like cover accessibility in their development and UX courses? If so, is there any resources for different countries to indicate which training organisations that cover this in their courses and what level of quality the training is?
Sean Murphy
Accessibility Software engineer
seanmmur@cisco.com<mailto:seanmmur@cisco.com>
Tel: +61 2 8446 7751<tel:+61%202%208446%207751>      Cisco Systems, Inc.
The Forum 201 Pacific Highway
ST LEONARDS
2065
Australia
cisco.com<http://cisco.com/>

 Think before you print.
This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, use, distribution or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive for the recipient), please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this message.


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