AccessComputing

Recognizing the value of learning computer science (CS) for all students, many nationwide efforts are underway to ensure that all students in K-12 schools are introduced to computer science. Unfortunately, many of these efforts do not promote practices that are fully accessible and inclusive of students with disabilities. Three examples of inclusive efforts are listed below.

Hire Heroes USA was formed in 2007 by representatives from Seattle area corporations who wanted to help veterans and military family members find corporate workforce jobs. Each year, Hire America's Heroes hosts an annual symposium to "share best practices and success strategies for sourcing, recruiting, hiring, on-boarding, and retaining America's transitioning service members and military veterans."

Throughout 2020, as conferences moved online in response to the global pandemic, many struggled with accessibility while others took proactive steps to make their conference more accessible. The 2020 Association of Computing Machinery International Computing Education Research Conference (ICER) is an example of one conference that chose to take proactive steps by captioning the sessions and providing clear guidelines to presenters about accessible presentations.

Some students with disabilities have difficulty taking notes. For example, a student with an auditory processing problem may take few or unclear notes. Physical and hearing impairments may also limit speed and make note-taking difficult. A note-taking accommodation is intended to provide information that the student would have gotten on his own, if it were not for his disability. Common ways to provide note-taking accommodations include the following:

There are many products available that allow web designers, developers, and content authors to evaluate the accessibility of their web pages and sites. Many tools also prompt users to make specific repairs. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) maintains an extensive list of such tools in their document Evaluation, Repair, and Transformation Tools for Web Content Accessibility.