Accessibility in Web Development Education

Join accessibility expert Natalie MacLees and novice Natalie G. in the 14th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss the significant gaps in web development courses regarding accessibility training. They also reflect on the current state of web development education and the misconceptions surrounding accessibility and provide recommendations for resources and training to improve developers’ knowledge of web accessibility.

Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is our 14th episode. I’m Natalie G, and here with us today is

Natalie MacLees: Natalie M.

Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert. While I’m an accessibility novice here to learn along with all of our podcast viewers too. So, in this episode, we’re gonna talk about web development courses and their general lack of accessibility training. What is the current state of web development education, Natalie? What would you say?

Natalie MacLees: I would say most web development courses at any level, whether that’s online courses, boot camps, college courses, et cetera, have either no training at all about accessibility or will have like one unit on it, you know, out of 20 units that you might do. Will have one little unit introducing accessibility.

So, a lot of web developers are coming out of those courses. You know, whatever kind of course it is, with no background, no history, no knowledge of accessibility really at all, or just the tiniest hint that it might be something that they need to pay attention to.

Natalie Garza: What is your journey through accessibility? ’cause you started in web development.

Natalie MacLees: I started in web development, but I’m old. So, I started in web development before there were any courses. So, I started in web development. When you taught yourself, or you didn’t learn, you just figured it out yourself, or you didn’t learn. So, I got super excited, I got my first, internet enabled computer in 1996 and really quickly realized going on AOL that having your own website was an option that you could do.

And I was like, wait, what? You can have your own website. Oh my gosh. And I spent hours, hours and hours and hours, hundreds of hours on this website. And I just got really excited about it. And then a few years later, realized like, wait, this is something people will pay you to do. So I got really excited about it.

And then pretty early on in the year 2000, I got a job at Penn State University, building websites. Specifically, I was working in the chemistry department there and building the websites for the courses. Right, so if you were taking Chem 12, which is like the intro to chemistry that freshmen would take, there would be a Chemistry 12 website.

That you could go, you could get the notes, you could get the study guides for the exams and all of those kinds of things. And that was my job, was doing all of those, course websites. And I was about two weeks into it when one day my phone at my desk rang and it was the disability services office saying, ” excuse me, what do you think you’re doing on these websites?

Students with disabilities can’t use them.” And I was just like, “What? What are you talking about.” And so they provided me, at no cost to me, at their own cost. Tons and tons of training in how to build websites in an accessible way, which was, you know, web development. In the early days, it was the wild, wild west.

There was no training, there was no official certifications, there was just nothing. And so I got all of that training and I learned how to build websites to be accessible and then was shocked when I moved on from that job three years...