Teaching accessibility as a shared endeavour: building capacity across academic and workplace contexts
Teaching accessibility as a shared endeavour: building capacity across academic and workplace contexts
The social model of disability, accessibility legislation, and the digital transformation spurred by COVID-19 expose a lack of accessibility capacity in the digital workforce, indicating persistent gaps in academic and professional education. This paper reports qualitative research with 30 expert educators in academia and the workplace to consider the relationship between these sectors in building accessibility capacity. Their insights highlight important disconnects and contextual challenges that educators must manage and navigate. Digital accessibility is increasingly recognised as a shared endeavour in the workplace. However, in academia, faculty cultures and disciplinary silos can result in responsibility for accessibility defaulting to individuals. To prepare accessibility-skilled professionals, cross-role education and training is necessary across disciplines. With a focus on teaching and training practices, we highlight the need for academia and the workplace to learn from each other and adapt together to generate pedagogies that will better prepare learners for accessibility practice.
web accessibility, higher education, pedagogy, teaching, workplace training
Coverdale, Andy
27ac1a1c-5502-4ee3-b0e2-fc9226ff7b22
Lewthwaite, Sarah
0e26d7cf-8932-4d65-8fea-3dceacf0ea88
Horton, Sarah
9dfbfe74-8c91-44fb-867f-f2325a9d0174
25 February 2022
Coverdale, Andy
27ac1a1c-5502-4ee3-b0e2-fc9226ff7b22
Lewthwaite, Sarah
0e26d7cf-8932-4d65-8fea-3dceacf0ea88
Horton, Sarah
9dfbfe74-8c91-44fb-867f-f2325a9d0174
Coverdale, Andy, Lewthwaite, Sarah and Horton, Sarah
(2022)
Teaching accessibility as a shared endeavour: building capacity across academic and workplace contexts.
19th International Web for All Conference, Virtual.
25 - 26 Apr 2022.
5 pp
.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
The social model of disability, accessibility legislation, and the digital transformation spurred by COVID-19 expose a lack of accessibility capacity in the digital workforce, indicating persistent gaps in academic and professional education. This paper reports qualitative research with 30 expert educators in academia and the workplace to consider the relationship between these sectors in building accessibility capacity. Their insights highlight important disconnects and contextual challenges that educators must manage and navigate. Digital accessibility is increasingly recognised as a shared endeavour in the workplace. However, in academia, faculty cultures and disciplinary silos can result in responsibility for accessibility defaulting to individuals. To prepare accessibility-skilled professionals, cross-role education and training is necessary across disciplines. With a focus on teaching and training practices, we highlight the need for academia and the workplace to learn from each other and adapt together to generate pedagogies that will better prepare learners for accessibility practice.
Other
Coverdale et al_Teaching accessibility as a shared endeavour_Camera Ready
- Accepted Manuscript
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Published date: 25 February 2022
Venue - Dates:
19th International Web for All Conference, Virtual, 2022-04-25 - 2022-04-26
Keywords:
web accessibility, higher education, pedagogy, teaching, workplace training
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 455790
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/455790
PURE UUID: 9f0c6b88-4b22-4a71-97c8-df06160d7118
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Date deposited: 04 Apr 2022 16:46
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 07:11
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