Workplace approaches to teaching digital accessibility: establishing a common foundation of awareness and understanding
Workplace approaches to teaching digital accessibility: establishing a common foundation of awareness and understanding
Accessibility in the digital world is a shared responsibility, requiring a common foundation of awareness and understanding. However, little is known about how digital accessibility can be effectively taught, and research on workplace teaching and training in accessibility is highly scarce, despite its crucial role in building accessibility capacity in the workforce. This paper considers workplace accessibility pedagogy to focus on aspects of foundational education, characterized as a pedagogically informed set of teaching strategies, cultivated through organizational and workplace cultures and practices. It contributes an analysis and synthesis of pedagogic research with 55 experienced accessibility educators in higher education and the workplace, in the UK and internationally, drawing on insights from expert panel methods including interviews, forums and focus groups. We find that digital accessibility is identified as a necessary core competency for an inclusive digital world. We examine the prevalent approaches that experienced workplace educators use to establish foundational awareness and understanding of accessibility to enable learners to achieve core learning objectives. We report the challenges that workplace educators face, negotiating different contexts and working practices and adapting foundational learning experiences to meet the pedagogic demands of different roles, responsibilities, and specialist advancement. In doing so, we demonstrate that establishing a common foundation of awareness and understanding is the basis for a pedagogic framework for digital accessibility education, with relevance for both workplace and academic settings.
accessibility, computing, education, industry, pedagogy, professionals, teaching, training
Lewthwaite, Sarah
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Horton, Sarah
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Coverdale, Andy
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13 October 2023
Lewthwaite, Sarah
0e26d7cf-8932-4d65-8fea-3dceacf0ea88
Horton, Sarah
9dfbfe74-8c91-44fb-867f-f2325a9d0174
Coverdale, Andy
27ac1a1c-5502-4ee3-b0e2-fc9226ff7b22
Lewthwaite, Sarah, Horton, Sarah and Coverdale, Andy
(2023)
Workplace approaches to teaching digital accessibility: establishing a common foundation of awareness and understanding.
Frontiers in Computer Science, 5, [1155864].
(doi:10.3389/fcomp.2023.1155864).
Abstract
Accessibility in the digital world is a shared responsibility, requiring a common foundation of awareness and understanding. However, little is known about how digital accessibility can be effectively taught, and research on workplace teaching and training in accessibility is highly scarce, despite its crucial role in building accessibility capacity in the workforce. This paper considers workplace accessibility pedagogy to focus on aspects of foundational education, characterized as a pedagogically informed set of teaching strategies, cultivated through organizational and workplace cultures and practices. It contributes an analysis and synthesis of pedagogic research with 55 experienced accessibility educators in higher education and the workplace, in the UK and internationally, drawing on insights from expert panel methods including interviews, forums and focus groups. We find that digital accessibility is identified as a necessary core competency for an inclusive digital world. We examine the prevalent approaches that experienced workplace educators use to establish foundational awareness and understanding of accessibility to enable learners to achieve core learning objectives. We report the challenges that workplace educators face, negotiating different contexts and working practices and adapting foundational learning experiences to meet the pedagogic demands of different roles, responsibilities, and specialist advancement. In doing so, we demonstrate that establishing a common foundation of awareness and understanding is the basis for a pedagogic framework for digital accessibility education, with relevance for both workplace and academic settings.
Text
fcomp-05-1155864
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 28 September 2023
Published date: 13 October 2023
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
This study is funded by the UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship MR/S01571X/1.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 Lewthwaite, Horton and Coverdale.
Keywords:
accessibility, computing, education, industry, pedagogy, professionals, teaching, training
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 483099
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/483099
ISSN: 2095-2236
PURE UUID: 895aa12f-e825-4468-a8bb-f34e0293f3ee
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Date deposited: 23 Oct 2023 16:46
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 04:00
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