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Studies indicate that much of the software created today is not accessible to all users, indicating that developers don’t see the need to devote sufficient resources to creating accessible software. Compounding this problem, there is a lack of robust, easily adoptable educational accessibility material available to instructors for inclusion in their curricula. To address these issues, we have created five Accessibility Learning Labs (ALL) using an experiential learning structure. The labs are designed to educate and create awareness of accessibility needs in computing. The labs enable easy classroom integration by providing instructors with complete educational materials including lecture slides, activities, and quizzes. The labs are hosted on our servers and require only a browser to be utilized. To demonstrate the benefit of our material and the potential benefits of our experiential lab format with empathy-creating material, we conducted a study involving 276 students in ten sections of an introductory computing course. Our findings include: (I) The demonstrated potential of the proposed experiential learning format and labs are effective in motivating and educating students about the importance of accessibility (II) The labs are effective in informing students about foundational accessibility topics (III) Empathy-creating material is demonstrated to be a beneficial component in computing accessibility education, supporting students in placing a higher value on the importance of creating accessible software. Created labs and project materials are publicly available on the project website: http://all.rit.edu
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Do Users Act Equitably? Understanding User Bias Through a Large In-person Study
Inequitable software is a common problem. Bias may be caused by developers, or even software users. As a society, it is crucial that we understand and identify the causes and implications of software bias from both users and the software itself. To address the problems of inequitable software, it is essential that we inform and motivate the next generation of software developers regarding bias and its adverse impacts. However, research shows that there is a lack of easily adoptable ethics-focused educational material to support this effort.To address the problem of inequitable software, we created an easily adoptable, self-contained experiential activity that is designed to foster student interest in software ethics, with a specific emphasis on AI/ML bias. This activity involves participants selecting fictitious teammates based solely on their appearance. The participant then experiences bias either against themselves or a teammate by the activity’s fictitious AI. The created lab was then utilized in this study involving 173 real-world users (age 18-51+) to better understand user bias.The primary findings of our study include: I) Participants from minority ethnic groups have stronger feeling regarding being impacted by inequitable software/AI, II) Participants with higher interest in AI/ML have a higher belief for the priority of unbiased software, III) Users do not act in an equitable manner, as avatars with ‘dark’ skin color are less likely to be selected, and IV) Participants from different demographic groups exhibit similar behavior bias. The created experiential lab activity may be executed using only a browser and internet connection, and is publicly available on our project website: https://all.rit.edu.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2145010
- PAR ID:
- 10459882
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society (ICSE-SEIS)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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This tutorial will introduce our Accessibility Learning Labs (ALL). The objectives of this collaborative project with The National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) are to both inform participants about foundational topics in accessibility and to demonstrate the importance of creating accessible software. The labs enable easy classroom inclusion by providing instructors all necessary materials including lecture and activity slides and videos. Each lab addresses an accessibility issue and contains: I) Relevant background information on the examined issue II) An example web-based application containing the accessibility problem III) A process to emulate this accessibility problem IV) Details about how to repair the problem from a technical perspective V) Incidents from people who encountered this accessibility issue and how it has impacted their life. The labs may be easily integrated into a wide variety of curriculum at high schools (9-12), and in undergraduate and graduate courses. The labs will be easily adoptable due to their selfcontained nature and their inclusion of all necessary instructional material (e.g., slides, quizzes, etc.). No special software is required to use any portion of the labs since they are web-based and are able to run on any computer with a reasonably recent web browser. There are currently four available labs on the topics of: Colorblindness, Hearing, Blindness and Dexterity. Material is available on our website: http://all.rit.edu This tutorial will provide an overview of the created labs and usage instructions and information for adaptors.more » « less
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
