Computer Science Principles for Teachers of Blind and Visually Impaired Students
Open accessAbstract
The College Board's AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) content has become a major new course for introducing K-12 students to the discipline. The course was designed for many reasons, but one major goal was to broaden participation. While significant work has been completed toward equity by many research groups, we know of no systematic analysis of CSP content created by major vendors in relation to accessibility for students with disabilities, especially those who are blind or visually impaired. In this experience report, we discuss two major actions by our team to make CSP more accessible. First, with the help of accessibility experts and teachers, we modified the entire Code.org CSP course to make it accessible. Second, we conducted a one-week professional development workshop in the summer of 2018 for teachers of blind or visually impaired students in order to help them prepare to teach CSP or support those who do. We report here on lessons learned that are useful to teachers who have blind or visually impaired students in their classes, to AP CSP curriculum providers, and to the College Board.
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Three of the papers with disabled participants featured disabled author-participants.
“Three of these papers even featured disabled author-participants, with blind students [5, 17] and a blind CS professional [47].”
From Where are the Disabled Students?: A Literature Review of Disability Inclusion in Computing Education Research (2026) · cites this paper as [47]
One paper involved a blind CS professional as both an educator/workshop participant and author.
“One paper involved a blind CS professional as both an educator/workshop participant and author [47].”
From Where are the Disabled Students?: A Literature Review of Disability Inclusion in Computing Education Research (2026) · cites this paper as [47]
One instance of a disabled educator participating directly in a study was found.
“Interestingly, we found one instance of a disabled educator participating directly in a study [47].”
From Where are the Disabled Students?: A Literature Review of Disability Inclusion in Computing Education Research (2026) · cites this paper as [47]
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- Authors
- Stefik, A., Ladner, R. E., Allee, W., & Mealin, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Nevada, Las Vegas (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- North Carolina State University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2019-02-22
- Pages
- 766-772
- OpenAlex
- W2917287583
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 16
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4
- FWCI
- 4.92
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1738259 and 1738252)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Education and Employment
- Keywords
- AP Computer Science Principles, accessibility, blind and visually impaired students, students with disabilities, Code.org, curriculum change, teacher professional development, widening participation, K-12 computer science
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