Beyond HCI: The Need for Accessibility Across the CS Curriculum
Open accessAbstract
Few instructors include accessibility in computing education curriculum despite its importance in the computing field. Prior work on accessibility and CS education vary on what accessibility knowledge is appropriate for future computing professionals and is covered mainly in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and web design courses. In practice, there is no comprehensive list of learning objectives to characterize Accessibility as a competency even though it is an increasingly desired skillset across computing broadly. Moreover, in the soon-to-be-released CS2023, the Accessibility Knowledge Unit is nested within HCI. This placement fails to highlight the role accessibility plays throughout the CS curriculum, nor does it provide sufficient structure to guide CS educators. Thus, these efforts may not be enough to prepare future tech professionals with adequate accessibility skills to meet growing industry demand. We argue that Accessibility should be its own Knowledge Area within the CS curriculum. We present a set of knowledge units with topics and illustrative learning objectives for an Accessibility Knowledge Area in Computing Education. These objectives were produced through synthesizing computing education and accessible computing literature and discussions among the authors, who are subject matter experts in both computing education and accessibility. In this position paper, we make the case that Accessibility should be incorporated into computer science across the curriculum beyond just HCI, and we demonstrate how the knowledge units spans the different facets of computing. In addition to highlighting the cross-curriculum importance of Accessibility, the presented Knowledge Area outline provides structure for future work in creating teaching resources and guiding curricular integration.
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These challenges also affect students and early-career professionals in HCI, who often encounter accessibility only briefly during their studies.
“These challenges also affect students and early-career professionals in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), who often encounter accessibility only briefly during their studies [17, 56, 59].”
From Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (2025) · cites this paper as [17]
The Introduction (page not provided) says accessibility is usually taught in HCI or design courses, if at all. Section 2.1 (page not provided) says few computing graduates have more than surface-level accessibility knowledge and that applicants for UI/UX roles often lack the needed skills. The paper does not specifically establish that HCI students or early-career HCI professionals often encounter accessibility only briefly during their studies. (LLM, conf=0.83)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredMany HCI and design students encounter accessibility only superficially.
“Many HCI and design students encounter accessibility only superficially [17, 56, 59].”
From Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (2025) · cites this paper as [17]
The Introduction says accessibility is usually placed in HCI and design courses, while §2.1 says few computing graduates understand it beyond the surface. The paper does not specifically say that many HCI and design students encounter accessibility only superficially; its statement about superficial understanding concerns computing graduates generally. (LLM, conf=0.83)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAccessibility is still underrepresented in many curricula, and even when it is addressed, it is rarely taught in an applied, example-based way.
“Accessibility is still underrepresented in many curricula, and even when it is addressed, it is rarely taught in an applied, example-based way [17, 38, 40, 42, 48, 52, 56].”
From Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (2025) · cites this paper as [17]
The Introduction says most computing programs place accessibility in HCI or design courses, if they address it at all, supporting the claim that it is underrepresented. Section 4.2 discusses lectures, projects, games, and proposed programming assignments, but does not establish that applied, example-based teaching is rare when accessibility is taught. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAccessibility is often underrepresented in design education.
“Regarding students' prior knowledge, our findings support research showing that accessibility is often underrepresented in design education [17, 36, 38, 40, 42, 48, 52, 56].”
From Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (2025) · cites this paper as [17]
The Introduction says computing programs place accessibility in HCI and design courses if they address it at all, and §4.1 says it has become part of some HCI and web design courses. These passages support limited coverage in computing education, but do not establish how often accessibility is underrepresented across design education more broadly. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.78)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredPrior work reports that targeted, practice-oriented interventions and direct contact with peer experts improve knowledge and perspective taking when learning is authentic and situated.
“The significant gain on accessible design knowledge coheres with targeted, practice-oriented interventions and direct contact with peer experts reported in prior work, which show improvements in knowledge and perspective taking when learning is authentic and situated [2, 10, 19, 27].”
From Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education (2025) · cites this paper as [10]
Section 4.2 describes projects and programming assignments as approaches to teaching accessibility, and Section 3.1 emphasizes learning from disabled people’s experiences. The paper does not report that these approaches, or direct contact with peer experts, improved knowledge and perspective taking in authentic, situated learning. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Curriculum embedding is a necessary but not sufficient condition, to be complemented by policy, resourcing, and platform-level constraints.
“Our results primarily speak to the first step of this pathway, learner knowledge and collaborative practice, rather than downstream institutional or platform change; accordingly, we frame curriculum embedding as a necessary but not sufficient condition, to be complemented by policy, resourcing, and platform-level constraints [4, 10, 16, 19, 21, 30, 37].”
From Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education (2025) · cites this paper as [10]
Sections 4.1 and 4.2 call for accessibility across the CS curriculum and say that doing so requires institutional endorsement and instructor training. The paper also discusses inaccessible underlying systems and inadequate allocation of resources (sections ‘Comprehensively Cover Accessibility’ and 2.1). It does not explicitly establish policy, resourcing, and platform-level constraints together as necessary complements to curriculum embedding. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredEmbedding these practices across the curriculum mitigates one-off participation and intermittent access to lived experience, supports recruiting more than one peer contributor per cohort, builds predictable reflection and feedback routines, and aligns skills with industry expectations for accessibility.
“Embedding these practices across the curriculum (rather than siloed in electives) mitigates one-off participation and intermittent access to lived experience, supports recruiting more than one peer contributor per cohort, builds predictable reflection and feedback routines, and aligns skills with industry expectations for accessibility [10, 21, 30].”
From Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education (2025) · cites this paper as [10]
Section 4.1 advocates integrating accessibility across the CS curriculum and says this could bridge the gap between industry needs and academic outcomes; the Conclusion likewise links its learning objectives to industry demands. The paper does not support the more specific claims that this integration mitigates intermittent access to lived experience, enables recruitment of multiple peer contributors per cohort, or establishes predictable reflection and feedback routines. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe results primarily speak to learner knowledge and collaborative practice, not downstream institutional or platform change.
“Our results primarily speak to the first step of this pathway, learner knowledge and collaborative practice, rather than downstream institutional or platform change; accordingly, we frame curriculum embedding as a necessary but not sufficient condition, to be complemented by policy, resourcing, and platform-level constraints [4, 10, 16, 19, 21, 30, 37].”
From Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education (2025) · cites this paper as [10]
Section 4.2 says that embedding accessibility across CS courses requires systemic institutional endorsement and instructor training; the Conclusion also calls for collaboration beyond academia. These passages support complementing curriculum work with institutional action, but they do not address the cited sentence’s policy, resourcing, or platform-level constraints. The statement about “our results” is the citing authors’ own characterization, not a finding attributed to this source. (LLM, conf=0.83)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAccessibility topics remain peripheral in many computer science programs.
“Recent curriculum studies underscore that accessibility topics remain peripheral in many computer science (CS) programs and should be woven across core courses rather than confined to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) electives [10, 19].”
From Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education (2025) · cites this paper as [10]
Documented assignment-level pathways and program-level skill alignment exist to support curricular embedding.
“documented assignment-level pathways and program-level skill alignment exist to support it [4, 6, 10, 19, 21, 30, 31, 35].”
From Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education (2025) · cites this paper as [10]
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Figueira, I., Cisneros, J. M., Weber, J. L., Sanka, W., Phan, K., Wong-Ma, J., & Branham, S. M. (2026) · Proceedings of the 57th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V.1 · doi:10.1145/3770762.3772561 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Teaching Participatory Inclusive IT Design with a Neurodiversity Lens in Computing Education
Hermann, J., Jansen, N., Richter, U., Fleer, A., & Doganün, A. (2025) · Proceedings of the 25th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research · doi:10.1145/3769994.3770007 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“Recent curriculum studies underscore that accessibility topics remain peripheral in many computer science (CS) programs and should be woven across core courses rather than confined to Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) electives [10, 19].”
InfluentialKubullek, A.-K., Zimmer, L., Ly, T. T. M., & Dogangün, A. (2025) · Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3764687.3764711 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Elglaly, Y. N., Baker, C. M., Ross, A. S., & Shinohara, K.
- Affiliations
- Western Washington University (US)
- Creighton University (US)
- Bucknell University (US)
- Rochester Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2024-03-07
- Pages
- 324-330
- OpenAlex
- W4392564675
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 7
- FWCI
- 17.11
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (2121606, 2121428, 2121549)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Information Systems Education and Curriculum Development
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
- Keywords
- accessibility, learning objectives, accessible computing, curriculum integration, human-computer interaction, knowledge units, competence development
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