Engineering University of Toronto signs up for IBM accessibility program
Grant Buckler @grantbuckler
Published: March 28th, 2007
An IBM-sponsored program to help ensure that computer science graduates learn to design products with disabled people’s needs in mind could mean better product design for everybody.
IBM has so far signed up five universities, including the University of Toronto, for its Accessibility Common Courseware Exchange for Software Studies (ACCESS). That program will help the institutions develop and share course materials to teach students how to design software that people with disabilities can use comfortably.
The project had its roots in a programming contest that IBM organized for students, said Angel Franco, project manager of the company’s Human Ability and Accessibility Center. The students were asked to write computer programs to check whether Web sites are accessible for people with disabilities.
That contest made it apparent that many students were learning little or nothing about designing for people with disabilities, Franco said. “It appeared that this was the first time it had over occurred to them to ask the question: Well, how does a blind person use the Internet?”
IBM then conducted a survey that verified [...]