The AccessComputing team has been working hard on increasing the number of computing graduates who have rigorous knowledge of accessibility. In partnership with Teach Access (teachaccess.org), we have been planning training workshops for faculty motivated to teach about accessibility. We shared some of our local efforts to expand accessibility instruction at the University of Washington at both the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) 2017 conference in Seattle this past March, as well as through a recent issue of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Inroads magazine.
To support these efforts, we are also conducting a nation-wide survey of faculty efforts to teach accessibility in computer and information sciences departments, schools, and colleges. The survey focuses on current practices, but also barriers to teaching about accessibility. We hope the data will help us better position Teach Access and AccessComputing efforts to increase access to rigorous knowledge about accessibility and access technologies. We look forward to sharing the results of this survey in a future issue of this newsletter.