Opening the Eyes of Those Who Can See to the World of Those Who Can't: A Case Study
By Harrison, Susan M.; Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - 2005, St. Louis, Missouri, USA,Publication Date: February 23-27, 2005
Review of a segment of a webpage design course at the University of Wisconsin developed to increase student awareness of the needs of users with visual impairments. Students, working in teams of one blind-folded member using the keyboard and screen-reader software and one sighted member serving as a guide, were asked to use screen-reader software, Window-Eyes, to locate a reference book on the local library’s website and to select a greeting card from a greeting-card website. Students also checked existing webpages for compliance with WCA (Wireless Communication Associations International) Guidelines 1.0 for accessibility. During the following class period, a blind member of the university community demonstrated how she uses a screen reader to navigate websites. Finally, students were asked to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts of the course by creating an accessible website, which was tested for accessibility using Bobby by Watchfire, software which proved helpful to students in identifying problem areas. The student-created webpages were visually attractive as well as accessible, which showed the course had met its goal of “opening the eyes of those who can see to the world of those who can’t.”
Assistive Products Discussed: WINDOW-EYES PROFESSIONAL
Published by: Association for Computing Machinery (Website:http://www.acm.org)
SIGCSE (ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) (Web Site: http://sigcse.org )
Link to text: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1050000/1047368/p22-harrison.pdf?key1=1047368&key2=9322703911&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=40024995&CFTOKEN=96988593
