“Accessibility is Important to Everybody”: Unpacking Students’ Understanding About Accessibility

Abstract

Existing research on accessibility in computing courses identifies barriers and practices for teaching web accessibility, but little work has been done to leverage students’ acquired understanding of accessibility as a meaningful topic of study. In this paper, we use students’ assignments to offer insights about what students take away when they learn about web accessibility. Our analysis begins to unpack how students recognize the importance of accessibility, the affordances they associate with it, as well as a considerable willingness to implement accessibility features beyond minimum requirements.