Introduction

Over the years, we have heard from many faculty about a desire to learn more about accessibility and to think more critically about ways to integrate it into their teaching. Forming a faculty learning community based around learning more about disability, accessibility, and inclusivity provides a structured format to learn more about the topic and develop curricula related to it. 

An AccessEngineering-organized faculty learning community at the University of Washington focused on accessibility met regularly during the Spring 2017 quarter. Participants met weekly to listen to guest experts, discuss readings, and/or give one another feedback.  Several faculty who participated in the group developed curricula and activities that they subsequently were able to implement in their courses.

Establishing a Faculty Learning Community

Begin by recruiting participants to join your faculty learning community. Consider whether participants will all be in engineering or technical fields or come from across the university. You may invite postdocs, graduate students, people with disabilities, disability services professionals, or others to participate in the community. Determine whether individuals can participate remotely and whether to invite individuals from other institutions to participate.

Once you have a group of interested participants, hold an informational meeting to set parameters for your group. Decide when your group will meet, how often to meet, and how long the community will continue meeting. You may establish that each participant will be responsible for organizing and leading one session over the course of time.

Activities for a Faculty Learning Community

Promote members from within the community leading activities or brainstorming together to decide on a schedule for the month, quarter, or year. Below are some ideas that have worked successfully for other communities:

• Invite guest experts to present on topics related to disability, accessibility, or universal design. These may be faculty from your own campus or they might present remotely. You might look to faculty in engineering departments whose work is related to accessibility or disability or faculty working in disability studies or special education or university staff working in accessible technology.
• Read and discuss articles related to accessibility and universal design as a group. Review articles in the resources section of this brief.
• Host a panel of individuals with disabilities to learn about their experiences as people with disabilities navigating campus, faculty, and technology.
• As participants develop assignments or curricula related to accessibility or universal design, share materials with one another and solicit feedback from one another.

Resources and Example Readings 

• Blaser, B., & Steele, K. M., & Burgstahler, S. E. (2015, June). Including universal design in engineering courses to attract diverse students. In proceedings from 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. Seattle, Washington: ASEE.
• Bigelow, K.E. (2012). Designing for success: Developing engineers who consider universal design principles. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 25(3), 212 – 231.
• DO-IT. (n.d.) Universal design in the curriculum. Retrieved from https://www.washington.edu/doit/universal-design-curriculum 
• DO-IT. (2019, April). Hosting a panel of students with disabilities: A promising practice in raising awareness of disability issues. DO-IT Knowledge Base. Retrieved from https://www.washington.edu/doit/hosting-panel-students-disabilities-promising-practice-raising-awareness-disability-issues
• De Couvreur, L., & Goossens, R. (2011). Design for (every)one: Co-creation as a bridge between universal design and rehabilitation engineering. International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 7(2), 107-121.
• Engineering Design Centre. (n.d.). Inclusive design toolkit. University of Cambridge. Retrieved from http://www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/
• Erlandson, R., Enderle, J., & Winters, J. (2006). Educating engineers in universal design and accessible design. In J.M. Winters & M.F. Story (Eds.), Medical instrumentation: Accessibility and usability considerations. CRC Press. 
• Foley, A., & Ferri, B. A. (2012). Technology for people, not disabilities: Ensuring access and inclusion. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12(4), 192-200.
• Gross, K. (2015). Empathy, diversity, and disability in design education. In proceedings from LearnxDesign '15: 3rd International Conference for Design Education Researchers, 1 (pp. 19-31). 
• Ladner, R. (2015). Design for user empowerment, Interactions, 22(7), 24-29.
• Ladner, R. (2018, March). ABET recognizes accessibility. DO-IT News, 26(2).​
• Shinohara, K., Bennett, C.L., Wobbrock, J.O. and Pratt, W. (2017). Teaching accessibility in a technology design course. In proceedings from CSCL ‘17: the International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (pp. 239-246). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
• Shinohara, K., Kawas, S., Ko, A. J., & Ladner, R. E. (2018). Who teaches accessibility?: A survey of U.S. computing faculty. In proceedings of SIGCSE ’18: the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. New York, NY: Association of Computing Machinery, 197 – 202. http://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159484
• Shinohara, K., Bennett, C.L. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2016). How designing for users with and without disabilities shapes student design thinking. In proceedings from ASSETS ‘16: the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (pp. 229-237). New York: ACM Press.​
• Shinohara, K., Bennett, C.L., Pratt, W. and Wobbrock, J.O. (2018). Tenets for Social Accessibility: Towards humanizing disabled people in design. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, 11(1).
• Wobbrock, J. O., Gajos, K. Z., Kane, S. K., & Vanderheiden, G. C. (2018). Ability-based design. Communications of the ACM, 61(6) 62-71.

Discussion Questions

• Are there places in the courses you teach where you might add content related to accessibility, disability, or universal design?  Where?
• How have students responded to this content in your courses?
• What are resources on your campus or in your local area that you might draw on?