This section provides materials used by instructors in several of the educational interventions in this study, including slides for lectures on the types of disabilities faced by individuals, assistive web technologies, and tools that can be used to analyze if a website is accessible. In addition to lecture content, some students had an opportunity in class to conduct projects on these topics; the description of these assignments to students are also included below.
This set of PowerPoint lecture slides (AbilitiesSenses.pptx) discusses various human abilities and the diversity of abilities relating to vision, hearing, and movement. The lecture discusses the impact of disabilities on users, e.g. how someone with colorblindness may experience difficulty distinguishing some colors.
These PowerPoint lecture slides (WebAccessibility.pptx) give an introduction about accessible web technologies and approaches, such as the use of alternate text, the inclusion of captions or transcriptions, and controlling the readability level of text. These slides also provide an introduction to technologies used to analyze webpages for accessibility, such as the WAVE tool.
This set of PowerPoint lecture slides (MotorCogTechLaws.pptx) discusses a wide range of technologies used by individuals with auditory, visual, physical, speech, cognitive, learning, or other disabilities. The focus is on assistive technologies that may be used to access computers or web content.
The following five accessible PDF documents are a subset of the assignments used in one of the human-computer interaction courses in our study. Specifically, a sequence of five assignments (exercise 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) in that course related to a team design project that asked students to identify a target audience, conduct an observational study to understand a problem they may face, and to design some website, mobile application, or other technology to address a need of this target group. The deliverables included observational reports, personas and scenarios, a usability test and report, and final written report, and a final video documenting their project.
In this exercise (Exercise3_DataCollection.pdf), students identify their project research question and plan a set of interview questions. This identifies as the first stage of the project. Students are expected to work on the project until the end of the semester. The specific directions of individual and group responsibilities are provided in the document.
The next stage of the project (Exercise4_Persona_Scenario.pdf) is to create user-profiles and personas and identify scenarios for the personas to interact with the solution. Guidelines for creating user-profiles and personas are provided in detail in the document.
In this stage of the project (Exercise5_Storyboard.pdf), the students create the storyboards which include the identified personas interacting with the solution. Elements of the storyboard are discussed in depth in the document.
The deliverable of this exercise (Exercise6_Usability_Test.pdf) is set up after the prototype of the solution is ready. The exercise asks students to usability test their prototype with other students in the class. Guidelines for the usability test are provided in the document.
This is the final deliverable (Exercise7_Final_Presentation.pdf) for the project. Students submit a video and report on their semester-long project. The videos are expected to be captioned.
