Accessibility Experience Lab: Discovering the Impact of Design on Disabilities

Many accessibility problems of devices and user interfaces could be avoided if the needs of people with disabilities were considered during the design process. This paper describes an accessibility experience lab module which introduces participants to both the barriers associated with disabilities and the impact that simple design changes can have on those barriers. The core of the lab is an experience session where participants are given functional limitations along with tasks at paired stations so they can compare their experiences on devices with inaccessible and accessible designs. For seven years the experience lab has been a part of the curriculum for first-year engineering students at the University of Wisconsin, and over 1700 students have completed it. In the popular lab, the students are engaged and report interest and insights into design for disabilities. Materials are available at www.trace.wisc.edu/training/explab/.

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