Can accessibility be a crucial use case to get students interested in Computer Science (CS)? I think we are all aware that there is a decline in Computer Science enrolments. In April's issue of the Communications of ACM, I saw an article in the ViewPoint column that discusses this issue and shows how working with disabled people can motivate students to study Computer Science. I think people who teach Computer Science courses would find this article interesting as it shows how accessibility can be a good use case for teaching.

Computing as Social Science

And so the message is just not getting out there. Students' firsthand experience with computers - their music and their phones - is accepted and reinforced by the image we portray in school - one of unrelenting banality and geekdom - and potential computer science students do not see themselves as having a greater impact.

At the University of Buffalo we have two senior-level courses that require teams to create real systems for real clients. They are introduced to the wider community of people with disabilities and told to make a difference. That's it. Those are the instructions. Improve the quality of life of someone less able than you. If you can't figure it out, you fail. So don't fail.

Full Paper: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1498765.1498779
Full Proceedings: Communications of the ACM, Volume 52, Issue 4, April 2009.

Labels: accessibility, compputer science, education, social

SIGSOFT is an ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering and has a monthly informal publication called Software Engineering Notes (SEN). This month, when I was browsing in the ACM DL, an article from the latest issue of SEN grabbed my attention: History of computers can raise student's interest. According to this short note, if well-known personalities speak about the old times, students get more interested in computer history. Apparently this idea is also supported by another article titled as The design of a history of computing course with a unique perspective. I am just wondering, why don't we do this for accessibility? Why don't we have well-known personalities in the accessibility community telling us about the old times to increase students' interest in accessibility?

History of computers can raise student's interest

What was software development back in the 1960's and how did it evolve?

Full Paper: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1384139.1384152
Full Proceedings: ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Volume 33, Issue 4 (July 2008) The design of a history of computing course with a unique perspective

In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a new history of computing course that includes personal and historical perspectives from faculty members to supplement the course material. Despite decreasing enrollments in our computer science courses, this new course has achieved significantly large enrollments and a wide audience due to this unique faculty perspective in addition to the approval of this course as a general education requirement that addresses the implications of science and technology on society.

Full Paper: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1121341.1121366
Full Proceedings: Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, 2006, Houston, Texas, USA.

Labels: computing, education, history, Web accessibility