AccessComputing and AccessCSforAll have hosted a series of webinars over the past year, with topics focused on inclusion, increasing participation, community-building, accessible coding, universally designing curriculum, and research programs for students with disabilities.
Learn more about these webinar topics and watch them online at the links below.
Including Students with Disabilities in CS Education
AccessCSforAll, August 8, 2022
Presenter: Richard Ladner (UW)
About 8.7 million PreK-12 students in the US have a disability and are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Act or under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. These students have a number of barriers that prevent them from participating fully in CS education. In this webinar we discuss these barriers and how they can be removed to make CS education more accessible and welcoming to these students.
Partnering to increase the participation of students with disabilities in computing at community and technical colleges
AccessComputing, May 06, 2022
Presenters: Brianna Blaser & Richard Ladner (UW), Tina Ostrander (Green River College)
Learn more about strategies and resources to support students with disabilities in computing programs at community and technical colleges. There are funded opportunities to support your work in this area! Learn more about how AccessComputing can support faculty and staff at community and technical colleges to increase the participation of students with disabilities in computing departments.
From Telecommute to Telecommunity: Pushing for institutional change
AccessADVANCE, Apr 22, 2022
Presenters: Rua Mae Williams (Purdue), Martina Svyantek (University of Virginia)
In 2022, disabled faculty and students are requesting accommodations to remain off campus or to limit in-person exposure through continued access to remote or hybrid delivery of instruction. Many universities are denying these requests by calling them "unreasonable burdens" to the institution or citing institutional business interests. Remote and hybrid instruction is neither an unreasonable burden (as proved by our past few semesters), nor does it interfere with the essential functions of "the position" -- instructing and learning. This webinar is a discussion of a book chapter contextualizing the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects on office-based and academic workspaces using a critical disability studies approach.
Accessible Blocks Discussion
AccessCSForAll, Mar 30, 2022
Presenter: Andreas Stefik & William Alee (Univ of Nevada Las Vegas)
Modern block languages consist of a complex series of moving parts. While they do have visualizations of the computer code, they also contain graphical editors, game editors, robotics systems, community forums, multimedia output, and many other attributes that must be accessible for students with disabilities to meaningfully and fully participate in computer science. In this webinar, we provide a summary of the state of what is and is not accessible across block languages and then foster a discussion about how we might get there.
Integrating Accessibility and Disability into the Computing Curriculum
AccessComputing, Mar 02, 2022
Presenter(s): Richard Ladner & Amy Ko (UW), Kristen Shinohara (Rochester Institute of Technology), other faculty from various institutions
In this SIGCSE-affiliated session, faculty shared how they have integrated accessibility and disability topics into their computer science (CS) courses. There are certain courses, such as web or app design and development and human-computer interactions, that should be addressing accessibility because of the human-facing nature of software. Less obvious are courses, such as intro CS, computer vision, natural language processing, data compression, software engineering, and others, that can also have accessibility and disability content.
DREU Information Session
AccessComputing, Jan 25, 2022
Presenter(s): Richard Ladner (UW), Raja Kushalnagar (Gallaudet University); students: Caelan MacArthur, Erin Howard
In this Zoom presentation students interested in applying for DREU for Summer 2022 receive information on the DREU process and hear from prior DREU participants.