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Research has demonstrated that much of the software being created today is not sufficiently inclusive, unbiased and equitable. This has been found to frequently result in real-world implications such as prejudice against women or people of color, and software that is inaccessible to people with disabilities. Preliminary research has found that empathyfocused experiential educational activities can be beneficial for not only creating empathy, but in advancing the participant’s interest and knowledge retention over traditional non empathy-building interventions. This work will provide a foundational background on the current research in the intersection of experiential learning and empathy-building interventions in computing education. We will also present several important questions that still must be explored, thus serving as the foundation for future work in this area. 

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. 

Mature and robust software applications should demonstrate several crucial qualities; namely, they should supply the functionality expected by the stakeholder(s), perform efficiently, be secure, and be accessible. However, despite government legislation and growing demonstrated need, accessibility is not a priority for a compelling amount of software applications being developed currently. The primary objective of our Accessible Learning Labs is to not only educate participants on how to properly create accessible software, but also effectively illustrate the need to create accessible software. Our experiential labs enable practitioners, instructors, and students to engage with the material using only a browser. This tutorial will benefit a wide spectrum of participants in the software engineering community, ranging from beginning-level students to experienced practitioners who want to ensure that they are properly creating inclusive and accessible software. Complete project material is publicly available on the project website: https://all.rit.edu 

Our Accessibility Learning Labs not only inform participants about the need for accessible software, but also how to properly create and implement accessible software. These experiential browser-based labs enable participants, instructors and practitioners to engage in our material using only their browser. In the following document, we will provide a brief overview of our labs, how they may be adopted, and some of their preliminary results. Complete project material is publicly available on our project website: http://all.rit. edu 

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.