Teaching Accessibility Across Disciplines: Perspectives from ADA Title II
Olivia H. Wang, Chunyu Liu, Rachel F. Adler, Caterina Almendral, Devorah Kletenik, Deana McDonagh, Bruno Oro, Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou · 2025 · ASSETS '25: Proceedings of the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/3663547.3748638
Summary
This workshop paper describes an interdisciplinary workshop held at ASSETS 2025 focused on how accessibility is taught across different academic disciplines, with particular attention to the implications of ADA Title II compliance for educational institutions. The authors, representing computer science, information science, education, industrial design, and cybersecurity, argue that teaching accessibility must extend beyond computing curricula to encompass fields like healthcare, journalism, architecture, and education. The paper builds on their successful first workshop at ASSETS 2024, which attracted 25 participants from diverse fields and identified key challenges including the need for enhanced instructor training, shared educational resources, early curriculum integration, effective student motivation, graded accessibility components, and community partnerships with disabled communities. The 2025 workshop sharpens its focus on how ADA Title II obligations shape accessibility education, noting that publicly funded institutions are now legally required to ensure their teaching practices, course materials, and software platforms meet accessibility standards. The authors frame accessibility education not merely as pedagogical best practice but as a legal requirement, arguing that this regulatory context creates both urgency and opportunity for institutions to embed accessibility across all disciplines.
Key findings
The paper highlights several important findings from the first workshop and the broader literature. A comprehensive survey by Shinohara et al. found that 175 of 352 U.S. institutions had at least one instructor teaching accessibility, demonstrating wide applicability in undergraduate computing programs. The first workshop identified actionable solutions including enhanced instructor and student training, shared educational resources, early and comprehensive curriculum integration, effective student motivation strategies, graded accessibility components, community partnerships with disabled communities and non-profit organizations, and establishment of communities of practice. The authors emphasize that accessibility education spans well beyond computing — journalism and media students trained in accessibility produce more accessible content, medical and nursing students better meet diverse patient needs, and healthcare professionals can select appropriate accessible software for patient communication. The paper argues that under Title II, publicly funded medical and educational programs must ensure accessible digital content as a requirement, not a bonus.
Relevance
This workshop paper is highly relevant for anyone involved in accessibility education or institutional compliance. As ADA Title II regulations increasingly mandate digital accessibility for public entities, understanding how to teach accessibility across disciplines becomes critical. The interdisciplinary perspective is particularly valuable — accessibility is not just a technical concern for developers but touches every field that produces digital content or services. The identified challenges (instructor training gaps, lack of shared resources, inconsistent curriculum integration) reflect real barriers that many institutions face. The emphasis on moving accessibility from a niche topic to a systemic priority, backed by legal mandates, provides a compelling framework for advocating broader accessibility education initiatives within organizations and academic programs.
Tags: accessibility education · ADA Title II · interdisciplinary education · computing education · universal design · curriculum design
Standards referenced: ADA Title II · WCAG