SIGCSE Panel: What and How to Teach Accessibility

The 2020 SIGCSE conference, to be held March 11 – 14, 2020 in Portland, Oregon, was canceled at the last minute. After the conference the organizers asked presenters to create videos of their talks and panels. The panel titled “Panel: What and How to Teach Accessibility” could not meet the deadline for preparing the videos because of the time commitments of the panelists. 

Instead, the panel got together on June 16, 2020 to have a live Zoom webinar on Teaching Accessibility. More than 115 people attended the webinar which is probably many more than would have attended the panel if it were held at the conference. The webinar featured Amy Ko, Leah Findlater, and Anat Caspi from the University of Washington, Daniel Krutz from Rochester Institute of Technology, and Paula Gabbert from Furman University. Panelists spoke on these topics:

• Amy Ko on introducing accessibility into a web design course
• Leah Findlater on teaching about accessibility in a master’s level course
• Anat Caspi on accessibility as a theme in a capstone design course
• Paula Gabert on accessibility as a theme in an intro to computer science course
• Daniel Krutz on tools to improve understanding about the need for accessibility