Click to go to our workshop page on the SIGCSE TS 2024 website.
Workshop Date
The technical symposium is held at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon from March 20-23, 2024.
Our workshop will be held on Saturday March 23rd from 3:30 - 5:30 pm PST.
The workshop will take place in meeting rooms B110-112.
Registration
To register, visit the SIGCSE 2024 TS site.
Workshop attendees must register for both the symposium and the workshop that they will be attending. Registering for a workshop costs an additional fee.
The deadline for regular registration is March 1, 2024. The deadline for late registration is March 23, 2024.
Abstract
Accessibility, the means by which a person with a disability can use digital technology, is an important topic for tech professions to know, but it is not commonly included in computing curricula. Prior research has shown that professional development opportunities are needed as few instructors are currently including accessibility into their courses and more instructors do not feel they have adequate training to include the information. The lack of accessibility skills in graduates is a current issue for the tech industry, which is facing a skills gap as laws and regulations place an increasing need for the skills. This workshop seeks to close that skills gap by having three instructors with extensive experience in accessibility and integrating it into their classroom partner with Teach Access, a non-profit organization with strong ties to the tech industry that focuses on bridging the accessibility skills gap across academia and industry, to share their experiences and guide instructors through making changes to their own courses. The workshop will first provide instructors with a background about accessibility. Next, we will cover examples of how to integrate accessibility into courses. Finally, instructors will work in small groups based on the courses they are teaching to develop modifications to their own courses.
Organizers
Catherine M. Baker is an associate professor at Creighton University. She has added accessibility into many of her courses and is currently research how to support other instructors to do the same. She served as a co-organizer for the Workshop on Including Accessibility in Computer Science Education at ASSETS 2022 and presented at the the SIGCSE pre-symposium session Integrating Accessibility and Disability into the Computing Curriculum in 2022. In addition, she is a partner of AccessComputing and participated in Microsoft’s Accessible Computer Science Education Fall Workshop in 2020.
Yasmine Elglaly is an assistant professor of computer science (CS) at Western Washington University (WWU). Her research focuses on spreading awareness about accessibility and disability through design and education. She investigates how accessibility can be taught in CS core courses and in machine learning courses. She organized two prior workshops on accessibility education. Elglaly serves as the director of the CS Distinguished Scholar program at WWU, the secretary of Teach Access executive committee, and the co-chair of SIGCSE’s universal design committee.
Kristen Shinohara is an associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She researches how to support graduate students with disabilities and how to include accessibility in computing courses. She served on the Accessibility and Inclusive Design ACM/IEEE/AAAI curriculum subcommittee member for HCI, as co-organizer for the Workshop on Including Accessibility in Computer Science Education at ASSETS 2022 and the SIGCSE pre-symposium session Integrating Accessibility and Disability into the Computing Curriculum in 2022, and participated in Microsoft’s Accessible Computer Science Education Fall Workshop in 2020.
Kate Sonka is the Executive Director of Teach Access. Previously, she was the Assistant Director of Inclusion and Academic Technology at the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. She holds a M.Ed. in Bilingual/Bicultural Education from DePaul University and has more than 12 years of experience in higher education. She has worked to improve teaching and learning with technology through course design and support, experiential learning, and training and mentorship for faculty members and students.
Rolando Mendez is the Director of Education of Teach Access. Previously, he was the Interim Associate Vice President of Online Learning at Inter American University of Puerto Rico. He is a bilingual learning experience designer, manager, and facilitator with more than 14 years of experience in higher education. Throughout his career, he has worked on creating sustainable, scalable, inclusive, and user-centered initiatives to leverage knowledge and learning, especially in online education. He is an advocate for accessibility, equity, and inclusion in education.
Teach Access began as a volunteer grassroots initiative in 2016 and gained its 501C3 status in 2021. Teach Access aims to equip 1 million learners across the United States with skills to build toward an inclusive world by 2030. In collaboration with industry, academia, and nonprofit/advocacy partners, we provide free programs and resources for instructors and students to learn about digital accessibility. Kate Sonka is the Executive Director and Rolando Méndez is the Director of Education.