Disability and Software Accessibility
Level:
Second-Year Software Design
Class Time:
Two 1-hour classes
Last Modified:
Sun 17 March 2024
This module provides software design students with philosophical tools to help them anticipate the needs of a diverse set of users. In the first half of the module, students learn about medical and social models of disability and discuss whether different examples of software features (like dark mode) and broad approaches to software design (like universal design) might exemplify one model or the other. In the second half of the module, students discuss their real-world obligations to design accessible software. They draw upon ideas from distributive justice to justify the foundations of their legal and professional obligations. The module concludes with students appending an accessibility report to their final software design project, describing the actual or hypothetical accessible features that their product might possess.
This module was developed by Steven Coyne and Lindsey Shorser, with contributions from Emma McClure, Jonathan Calver, and Paul Gries. Diane Horton and David Liu provided feedback on this module.
Materials
Module 1: in-class material
Module 2: in-class material
Homework