Participation at What Cost? Teaching Accessibility Using Participatory Design: An Experience Report
Abstract
As institutions respond to market demand in their training of the next generation of technology designers, there is an increasing awareness of the need to add accessibility to computer science and informatics curricula. Advocates have suggested three strategies for including accessibility and discussions of disability in courses: changing a lecture, adding a lecture or adding a new course. In this paper we report on our experiences with the latter; incorporating accessibility within two new graduate and undergraduate inclusive design courses taught concurrently. We found that while the use of participatory design was decidedly effective in supporting student learning and ameliorating ableist attitudes, creating and managing teams comprised of students and visually impaired co-designers proved challenging. Despite these challenges, overall, students demonstrated steady growth in their grasp of inclusive design concepts as they tackled accessibility challenges through a series of mobility-related group projects. Efficiencies were also realized through the concurrent teaching of both courses though the pace of course deliverables proved challenging at times for undergraduates. We argue that a review of our experience may help others interested in teaching accessibility related courses, specifically in course design and execution.
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Six papers reported teaching students about participatory design and accessibility-focused design methods such as Ability-Based Design, and five of these required students to interact with disabled people to inform or evaluate their projects.
“Six papers reported teaching students about participatory design and accessibility-focused design methods such as Ability-Based Design (e.g., [13, 14]), and five of these required students to interact with disabled people to inform or evaluate their projects.”
From Where are the Disabled Students?: A Literature Review of Disability Inclusion in Computing Education Research (2026) · cites this paper as [13]
Participatory design can be challenging to undertake in the classroom.
“However, participatory design can be challenging to undertake in the classroom [13].”
From Where are the Disabled Students?: A Literature Review of Disability Inclusion in Computing Education Research (2026) · cites this paper as [13]
8 interventions also sought to teach students general knowledge about AT. Four used demonstration and engagement with AT functionality, such as screen reader and text-to-speech, to support understanding of accessibility challenges.
“Within this focus, 8 interventions also sought to teach students general knowledge about AT. Four used demonstration and engagement with AT functionality, such as screen reader and text-to-speech, to support understanding of accessibility challenges (e.g., [9, 13]).”
From Where are the Disabled Students?: A Literature Review of Disability Inclusion in Computing Education Research (2026) · cites this paper as [13]
Cites
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Self-citationBrinkley, J., Posadas, B., Woodward, J., & Gilbert, J. E. (2017) · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/3132525.3132532 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
Self-citationExploring Augmented Reality Approaches to Real-Time Captioning
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Walking the Walk: Centering Students with Disabilities in Accessibility Education
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Positive Attitudes and Growing Confidence Among CS Students in Accessible Software Design
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- Authors
- Brinkley, J.
- Affiliations
- Clemson University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Brinkley, Julian
- ORCID
- Brinkley, Julian
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2020-02-26
- Pages
- 114-120
- OpenAlex
- W3010299004
- Cited by
- 12
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 1.35
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Education and Employment
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Keywords
- accessibility education, participatory design, inclusive design, disability, computer science curriculum, informatics curriculum, ableism, undergraduate and graduate courses
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