Introducing Accessibility for Blind Users to Sighted Computer

Science Students

The Aesthetics of Tools, Pursuits, and Characters

Răzvan Rughiniș

and Cosima Rughiniș

Department of Computer Science, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

Department of Sociology, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

Keywords: Accessibility, Design, Motivation, Education, Blind Users, Aesthetics.

Abstract: We analyze current approaches in motivating students to pursue accessibility, with a focus on blind users,

by examining scientific reports of courses in the computer science and engineering curriculum. We identify

three main motivational resorts: a ‘web of arguments’, referring to issues of morality, legality, and interest;

the practice of mainstreaming, which normalizes accessibility, and empathy. We argue that an aesthetic

frame could contribute to a forceful, persistent motivation, and we propose an aesthetic motivational

repertoire, on three dimensions: aesthetic value of technological tools, of engineers’ own work, and of their

direct and indirect relationships with blind persons. We present arguments, practices, and online resources

to support teachers that introduce accessibility for blind users to sighted students.

1 INTRODUCTION

There is a significant thread of research dedicated to

teaching accessibility for computer science and

engineering students. We are interested in examining

how authors (who, in these cases, are also teachers)

justify the importance of teaching accessibility, and

how they address students’ interests and concerns.

We argue that the dominant approach can be

enriched in order to support persistent motivation for

accessible design – that is, outside of the University

campus, after graduation, when IT professionals

have to confront competing demands and conflicting

priorities. We propose that aesthetic experiences –

as regards technological tools, one’s own

engineering work, and blind user characters – can

consolidate the current modus operandi for

motivating students, which is mostly focused on

considerations of legality, altruism, and profit.

The paper is structured as follows: we first

analyze the literature concerning accessibility in the

computer science curriculum, and we highlight the

dominant motivational approach, identifying three

resorts: the ‘web of arguments’, mainstreaming, and

empathy. We then go on to propose aesthetic

considerations as an additional resource, in relation

to three issues: the aesthetics of the technologies

of the blind characters with which they establish a

relationship through their performance. Students’

construction of blind personas can be a useful and

flexible learning tool with an aesthetic edge. The

final section concludes the paper.

2 INDUCING ACCESSIBLE

DESIGN: THREE PILLARS

Teachers of accessible design appeal to three ways

of engaging their students with this perspective:

argumentation, persuasion through empathy, and

routinization through mainstreaming.

2.1 The Web of Arguments

In articles that discuss various approaches to

teaching accessibility, the value of introducing it to

students is not treated as a self-evident matter: most

authors offer a justification, relying on several

arguments (Ludi, 2002; Rosmaita, 2006; Cohen,

Fairley, Gerry, & Lima, 2005; Harrison, 2005).

The “social responsibility argument” (Rosmaita,

2006), or ethical reasoning (Wang, 2012), appeals to

the goal of universal access for the World Wide

RughiniÈ

Z R. and RughiniÈ

Z C..

Introducing Accessibility for Blind Users to Sighted Computer Science Students - The Aesthetics of Tools, Pursuits, and Characters.

DOI: 10.5220/0004834700210029

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 21-29

ISBN: 978-989-758-022-2

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Web, as stated by the World Wide Web Consortium

(W3C). The “Web for All” design principle

stipulates: “The social value of the Web is that it

enables human communication, commerce, and

opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's

primary goals is to make these benefits available to

all people, whatever their hardware, software,

network infrastructure, native language, culture,

geographical location, or physical or mental ability”

(W3C, 2012a). W3C pursues this goal via the Web

Accessibility Initiative (WAI), that develops the

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

(W3C, 2012b).

The “legal argument” (Rosmaita, 2006; Wang,

2012) invokes legal requirements for Internet

accessibility; for example, in the United States these

derive from the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation

Act. Rising numbers of impaired students bring to

the forefront the issue of legally mandated equal

access in education (Cohen et al., 2005). In countries

where such legal requirements exist, skills for

accessibility design contribute to employability and

can thus be shown to be useful for students’ future

careers (Ludi, 2002; Cohen et al., 2005).

The market argument stresses the fact that

impaired users represent a significant proportion of

citizens and customers, which are lost through

inaccessible design (Ludi, 2002); this argument also

capitalizes on utility, this time from a business

perspective, complementing the increased

employability.

The “march of technology” argument (Rosmaita,

2006) points to the fact that accessibility does not

refer to impaired users only, but also to all users in

restricted contexts that become increasingly

common as technology permeates more areas of life:

“Automobile drivers—who otherwise have normal

vision—are blind with respect to the web while they

are driving. Likewise, a person surfing the web on a

small mobile handheld device is, for all intents and

purposes, a low-vision person accessing the web”

(ibid., p. 271).

The argument of direct benefits for all users adds

that we-as-able-users are likely to become closely

involved with impaired users, as we, our parents,

and significant others age (Ludi, 2002): “Visually

impaired computer users are a minority, but it’s a

growing minority, and it is growing faster as baby

boomers near retirement age. Further, it’s a minority

that will eventually include us all” (Rosmaita, 2006,

p. 274). This argument lends further support to the

market-related considerations.

The “technical reason” (Wang, 2012) indicates

that designing for accessibility increases

interoperability and standard compliance (also

pointed out by Rosmaita, 2006), thus serving the

general public and increasing designers’ skills and

employability (Waller, Hanson, & Sloan, 2009).

Overall, these arguments capitalize on

accessibility as a matter of a) morality – addressing

disabled people’s needs and rights, b) abiding the

law – and c) a matter of interest – for developer

employees, for businesses, and for the government.

In a nutshell, “the audience is growing, the law

requires it, and the industry trend is toward it”

(Harrison, 2005, p. 23).

Authors also address potential counter-

arguments. The issue of cost appears as the most

prominent expected hurdle: “I think that all would

agree that when faced with an inaccessible website

and an accessible website with the same

functionality, the accessible website is better. The

debate is really over who pays to implement

accessibility, and why they should have to bear that

cost” (Rosmaita, 2006, p. 274). How do authors

address the issue of cost? There are two main

answers. On the one hand, accessibility is deemed

“lightweight to introduce” (Cohen et al., 2005) – that

is, costs are not high, when introduced skillfully and

early. On the other hand, retrofitting accessibility is

significantly more costly, therefore it is better to

design directly for accessibility (Cohen et al., 2005;

Rosmaita, 2006).

Another expected counter-argument, introduced

by Waller et al. (2009), is that designing for

accessibility might “stifle” creativity (rather than

“spark” it), and it might lead into tradeoffs with

other important considerations such as “design

goals, technological limitations, customer objectives

and software objectives” (p. 157). There are no

explicit answers advanced for this concern.

Both types of counter-arguments raise the

following question: how can students approach

accessibility so that they would continue to engage it

outside of the classroom, when facing such counter-

arguments from team members or leaders (or even

from within themselves)? Each project has to

navigate a plethora of competing requirements and

considerations: how can accessibility stand a chance

against issues of beautiful design, or the use of

innovative-but-inaccessible technologies to entice

large numbers of mostly-able users? Since, for any

argument, there is a counter-argument, providing

students a set of good justifications for accessible

design seems to be necessary, but not sufficient for

successful confrontations ‘in the field’.

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

2.2 Empathy

A second resource for strengthening motivation for

accessibility consists in cultivating sighted students’

empathy with blind people, through a closer

experience of their living situations and

perspectives. There are several means through which

teachers of accessibility cultivate empathy, as

discussed in the reviewed publications.

The first such means is literature: Rosmaita

(2006) requires students to read Rod Michalko’s

memoir The Two-in-One (R. Michalko, 1998);

Michalko is a sociology professor who has written

compelling accounts of blindness and analyses of the

“sighted world” (R. L. Michalko, 1977), including

the University classroom (R. Michalko, 2001), by

examining interactions between blind and sighted

people.

The second avenue for introducing students to

the experiences of blind people consists in face-to-

face communication – that is, actually meeting blind

people. Such encounters can be organized as lectures

from blind academics, discussions with blind users

of technology (Harrison, 2005), possibly also blind

students (Rosmaita, 2006), or, at a higher level of

complexity, collaboration with blind people in

design projects (Waller et al., 2009).

The third way of cultivating empathy is to ask

able students to simulate blindness while using

computers, for example, by turning off the monitor

and navigating with a screen reader (Freire, de

Mattos Fortes, Barroso Paiva, & Santos Turine,

2007; Harrison, 2005; Rosmaita, 2006).

2.3 Mainstreaming

A third resource deemed useful for long term

motivation refers to how accessibility is framed

through curriculum design. The aim is to cultivate an

appreciation of accessibility as a default option, a

norm rather than an exception or an add-on feature.

A resource for framing accessibility as normality,

rather than a feature marked as controversial and

optional, consists in mainstreaming it throughout the

curriculum (Waller et al., 2009), by including it in

multiple areas and types of learning activities, or

throughout a given course (Ludi, 2002; Wang, 2012;

Harrison, 2005), by including it in multiple lectures

and assignments rather than as a specific, isolated

discussion.

Mainstreaming accessibility has two advantages:

at a symbolic level, it un-marks it as a special topic,

rendering it a normal and strongly normative

requirement. As regards skills, students face

challenges of accessible design continuously, in

multiple tasks and projects. If it becomes routine,

accessible design escapes the need for justification:

it is just how it’s done. Mainstreaming accessibility

throughout a course or program curriculum is

expected to achieve a routinization of concern, thus

going ‘under the radar’ of competing arguments.

3 AESTHETICS: A NEW PILLAR

We propose that there is a fourth pillar for sustaining

long-term student motivation, besides the web of

arguments, empathy, and mainstreaming. This

resource is largely missing from the examined

literature: aesthetics.

Taking into consideration the aesthetics of

accessibility does not refer strictly to the display of a

technology, although this is as stake as well; an

essential focus is on the process of technological

design itself, and the people with which we are

connected through work. We discuss these

dimensions in the following sections.

3.1 Aesthetics and Accessibility of

Tools: a Trade-off?

When aesthetics of technological tools are invoked

in the reviewed articles about teaching accessibility,

they are often presented in a trade-off with

accessibility. For example, Wang presents designers’

perspective as follows: “Without appreciating the

social importance of accessibility, Web designers

and developers can hardly be motivated to “burden”

their design with accessibility limitations” (Wang,

2012).

Along a similar line, Waller et al. report that

“[s]tudents are also asked to examine and discuss the

trade-offs between good aesthetic design, sound

software engineering and the need for accessibility,

for example through mock debates on whether

accessibility considerations stifle or spark creativity”

(Waller et al., 2009).

These quotes illustrate that the perceived trade-

off between accessibility and aesthetic design

(Mbipom, 2009) is often not challenged by teachers;

professors accept the assumption that accessibility is

a potential hurdle for a beautiful (or otherwise

aesthetically interesting) design.

From a statistical perspective on the current state

of technology, this trade-off may well exist –

although there is research that indicates otherwise.

For example, Mbipom (2009) analyzed 30 web

pages and concluded that those that are perceived as

IntroducingAccessibilityforBlindUserstoSightedComputerScienceStudents-TheAestheticsofTools,Pursuits,and

Characters

“clean”, “clear” and “organized” comply better, on

average, with WCAG 1.0, while being seen as

“beautiful” or “interesting” does not make a

difference. In a similar study (Mbipom & Harper,

2011), the authors analyzed 50 web pages and found

that those evaluated as “clean” had fewer

accessibility barriers, while the attributes of

“pleasing”, “fascinating”, “creative” and “aesthetic”

did not correlate significantly with accessibility.

These correlations are interesting descriptions of

the status-quo. Still, they may derive from a general

low level of accessibility, rather than from a real

independence of accessibility and design. While

there are good reasons while cleanliness and

clearness associate with higher accessibility, it is

possible that the missing correlation between

aesthetic sophistication (“interesting”, “fascinating”,

“creative”) and access hurdles actually derives from

the overall low level of accessibility of all pages

under study. That is, if designers do not bother to

develop accessible pages and there is a uniform low

performance in this respect, accessibility would not

correlate with design features because it would not

be variable. Low variation can lead to low

correlation with any attribute. The challenge remains

to cultivate an appreciation for high accessibility that

accompanies an interest in cutting-edge aesthetic

design. Cultivating performance simultaneously on

these two dimensions raises specific challenges.

Regan (2004) discusses aesthetics and

accessibility, diagnosing a “failure of the

imagination”. He observes that many accessible sites

are indeed aesthetically uninspiring and designers

ignore access requirements because they orient their

work towards inspiring models. There is a need for

aesthetically provocative accessible sites, to infuse

professional enthusiasm for accessibility in design

work. Such enthusiasm is possible, as he found out

by observing a team of designers who set out to

create an innovative and accessible site: they saw it

as a challenge, and engaged it with full energy. Still,

initial frenzy led to confusion and deep concern in

the following days, as designers began to struggle

with the un-visual world of the screen reader. As

Regan insightfully notices, designers are visual

professionals: they have fine tuned their visual

sensitivity and orientation skills for years. Asking

them to work in a non-visual environment can easily

switch from a challenge to an aggravation. In

addition, screen readers are complex applications,

which require some familiarity for proper operation,

and thus add to the initial vexation. Therefore,

engaging designers in accessibility work is not

trivial, and not “lightweight”: “Designers often

spend years honing their instincts for the visual UI.

A comparable and parallel effort should be made for

alternative environments” (Regan, 2004, p. 37).

Therefore, while respecting the most important

accessibility guidelines (such as adding ALT

descriptions to visual content, using headings,

avoiding unnecessary tables, and allowing for

resizeable fonts, among others) is not particularly

complicated (although adding captions may come

across as tedious and thus ‘postponable’), a creative

take on accessibility requires a high level of

determination to engage with a non-visual

environment. Such a creative approach is required in

order to transform accessibility from a professional

burden to a challenge, and to inspire technology

designers rather than to vex them.

Two possible ways to encourage students to

think about high accessibility and innovative

aesthetics in convergence, rather than in trade-off,

are:

‐ Encouraging a minimalist design aesthetic,

based on the “less is more” maxim, and

privileging information structure and richness

of content over decoration;

‐ Emphasizing flexibility itself as an aesthetic

criterion. Students can learn to understand

aesthetics not only through the eyes of sighted

persons, but also through the perspectives of

screen reader and screen magnifier users, or of

color-blind or dyslexic users. Flexibility

endows aesthetic value from the possibility of

meaningful use; there is also an element of

surprise, as flexibility is not always manifest at

a glance.

3.2 The Aesthetics of a ‘Job Well

Done’: Pursuing Technical Mastery

The aesthetic imagination of computer science

students can be energized not only in relation to the

tools they create, but also in relation to their own

work. The aesthetic value of accessible design as

technical wizardry is, we argue, an important

motivational resource.

The idea that accessible design is a proof of

smart engineering is not uncommon, as we have

seen above in the “march of technology” (Rosmaita,

2006) and “technical reasons” (Wang, 2012)

arguments. The question is, how to better translate

accessibility requirements into a professional

challenge for proving technical mastery? This is

more a matter of framing and illustrating, than of

explicit arguing. For example, the story of

dramatically improved accessibility of touchscreen

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

phones brought forward by the iPhone (Tsaran,

2009) displays accessibility-work as inspirational,

from a design perspective.

The “march of technology” argument is

particularly valuable to frame accessible design as

savvy design, because it transforms the limitations

of disability into opportunities of technological

reach in ever more diverse situations. This can be a

starting point for exercises of UX imagination: in

which walks of life can we imagine accessible

technologies to be attractive to various types of

users? How can accessibility turn into expanded

usability? If blind users and ‘power users’ are alike

in their strong preference for using key shortcuts

(Vuppala & Krishna, 2012), and driving users are

for all practical purposes blind to visual information

(Rosmaita, 2006), what other similarities can one

find across unlike life and work situations?

More concretely, teachers can frame the

accessibility designer as a whiz by cultivating a

professional appreciation for structure. Structured

design is a strong requirement for accessibility,

which is enhanced through clear specification of

types of entities (for example, through headings) and

by a clear prioritization of content according to its

importance. The weakest motivational force derives

from framing structure as a requirement of WCAG,

a requirement of the law, or a need of a group of

users – that is, extrinsically mandated. For a more

forceful motivation, the requirement of structure can

be framed as an aesthetic criterion of design

wizardry, along the following lines:

a) Clear, organized interfaces are highly usable:

clarity is a dimension of beauty;

b) Structure relates to depth rather than surface;

understanding how a blind person reads Web pages

through assistive technologies that linearize and

verbalize content can amount to understanding an

alternative, underlying structure of our shared and

yet diverging world; the informational structure of

visible realities holds a certain aesthetic appeal for

computer science students and professionals – as it

was maybe best illustrated by the Matrix digital rain

(which could be used as a teaching metaphor);

c) Last but not least, an explicit promotion of

minimalism as aesthetic current would support an

appreciation of structured, no-frills design that

favors accessibility (Mbipom & Harper, 2011);

minimalism has had its ups and downs in web

design, for example, but, as Thorlacius argues in his

discussion, we can probably agree on a matter of

possibility: “A minimalist Web site with no

extraneous aesthetics, and visual effects only in the

form of typeface and text layout, can be just as

aesthetically pleasing as a Web site with lots of

pretty pictures and fancy Flash installations”

(Thorlacius, 2007, p. 71-72).

An important resource for cultivating aesthetic

appreciation for structure in design consists in the

experience of ridiculousness for poorly designed

technologies that mime structure through visual

effects (for example, in web design, highlighting

headings through font formatting, assembling lists

through paragraph formatting, or using tables

unnecessarily). As an example of a learning situation

in this such humor becomes possible, Benavídez,

Fuertes, Gutiérrez, & Martínez (2006) ask students

to examine two apparently identical sites, one which

is accessible and one which is not. Teachers can

create humorous situations that downgrade

appreciation for design that is structure-less, tagging

it as ‘amateurish’ or ‘lazy’, for example. This

symbolic fight can then happen again and again

when graduates, future professionals, decide

consciously or infra-consciously to what extent to

structure their technologies, rather than accept older,

unstructured versions – which may be already

available for revamping, may be easier to delegate to

a team member, or may be otherwise more

convenient. An aesthetic disregard for ‘sloppy,

witless work’ may counterbalance ‘convenience’

better than alternative arguments of cost and benefit.

The experiential absurdity of structure-less or

otherwise low accessibility design can be brought to

life by navigating it through the assistive

technologies that blind or low vision people would

use. Screen readers’ ‘non-human voice’ (Tsaran,

2009) is often a topic of amusement among those

who experience it, as it is its mechanical ‘parroting’

of everything written (Finke, 2011); at the same

time, unnecessary repetition of content verbalized by

the mechanical voice of the reader can be not only

unhumorous, but downright aggravating (Gerber,

2002).

3.3 Aesthetics of Blind Characters

A third source of aesthetic appreciation of one’s

work in accessible design could derive from a

feeling of working in connection with blind people,

end users and most direct beneficiaries. The question

rises, how can empathy and a feeling of sharing

experiences across different life worlds be better

produced, and turned into an aesthetically valuable

experience?

IntroducingAccessibilityforBlindUserstoSightedComputerScienceStudents-TheAestheticsofTools,Pursuits,and

Characters

3.3.1 Representing Blind Users

The issue of representation of blind people for

sighted students is concomitantly challenging and

relatively under-discussed in the literature. As we

have seen, teachers of accessible design do stress the

importance of meeting blind people and witnessing

their experiences of technology, either through

lectures or through collaboration. Such encounters

generate many insights into the specific worldviews

and experiences of blind persons – bringing forward

both their problems and their skills and

achievements, often unimagined by able students

who are not familiar with disabilities.

We propose that such encounters can be

consolidated, as an experience, by adding

opportunities for explicit reflection on the diversity

of blindness, the shared-and-disparate worlds in

which sighted people coexist with blind people, and

the almost unimaginable skills that blind people

develop to master the world.

Sighted students and sighted persons in general

are often deeply impressed when meeting blind

people, and when their preconceptions are

confronted with real lives and actions. At the same

time, experiences of direct interaction can be

enhanced by mediated interplay.

Firstly, if direct interactions are not reflected

upon and if they are not elaborated into narratives,

their memories may fade, and their value for out-of-

classroom work, which is our focus, declines as the

years go by.

Secondly, there is often a limited number of

blind people that a sighted student will be

acquainted with personally, through her or his

University experience or otherwise; while

knowledge can be deep, there will remain a certain

limitation in breadth, concerning the variety of life

situations encountered.

Last but not least, given the extraordinariness of

some of these experiences, sighted students may be

at some loss of how to make sense of what they have

observed, in an existential, rather than a behavioral

way. What do the actions and interactions they have

been part of tell about human nature – about the

diversity or similarity of life situations, the

capabilities and limitations of people, the power of

individual and the power of relationships or of

technologies? There is an important work of sense-

making and conceptualization, which is the topic

matter of disability studies, which should be at least

touched upon in order to reach the full knowledge

and motivational potential of such encounters. While

there may not be time enough for a familiarization of

students with theories of disability, one could

probably find some intervals for a more informal

exploration. In the following section we aim to

indicate some online resources for this work of

sense-making, through which blind users become

strong characters, sharing the world and the work

with skilled technology designers.

3.3.2 Online Encounters

Based on the reviewed literature, it seems that

introducing online blind characters to visually able

students is a rarely used resource for teaching

accessibility. Still, there is a rich blind presence on

the Web; as it is to be expected, there is no shortage

of narratives, shared experiences, and opportunities

for digital interaction.

Online characters can complement meeting blind

people face-to-face in at least two respects. On the

one hand, there is the narrative richness: there are

many deep, insightful, detailed online written

accounts of living with blindness, ranging from

several paragraphs to book length; they offer

students vocabularies for making sense of this

condition of being in the world. On the contrary,

University-mediated encounters with blind people

are often limited in the amount of interaction they

can afford for individual students, and in the

diversity of topics touched in conversation and

narration. On the second hand, there is the diversity

of life situations: we can digitally reach people who

are blind students, parents, IT professionals,

teachers, unemployed, artists and so on; these

identities are, of course, overlapping, but usually

some of them will be more prominent in a given

account.

Online encounters with blind characters are an

apt method, for teachers, to reverse the dominant

framing of blind persons as needy, vulnerable, and

incomplete. Students can experience in so many

instances the frustration of blind people when being

treated as partially human - illustrated, for example,

by Atkinson (2007): “Misconceptions start to spout

from even your oldest friends' mouths because

negative attitudes about blindness permeate us all.

You are about to cross over into the dark side and

see what wriggles and writhes on the underbelly of

society. Folk will see you as the sufferer, the pitiful,

the afflicted, the subhuman – that's you, yes, you. If

you use a cane or a dog, people will stare as you

walk down the street. People will assume you are

more lacking in intelligence than your sighted

counterpart. People you have never met before will

ask if you want children, and if you do, they will ask

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

if the kids will have the same condition that you

have, and whether that is right or wrong. Welcome.

Your reproductive autonomy is in the docks of the

moral courts of the nation's minds. (…) Going blind

(...) is a grand experiment that most don't get to try:

to observe as your brain rewires and watch as the

human body adapts in infinite ways” (Atkinson,

2007). Online encounters facilitate a gradual re-

definition of blindness from ‘lack’ and biological

‘disease’ to a condition in life that is strongly shaped

by how it is defined and acted upon.

The tropes of extra-ordinariness and heroism are

very important for making sense, as a sighted

person, of blindness; the online environment offers

access to many blind characters with extra-ordinary

achievements that impress others through their

strength, unimaginable skills, and wisdom. It also

introduces characters that are ordinary in every

respect lest of being blind, and it also introduces

characters that are confused, overwhelmed, or

otherwise vulnerable; therefore, there is a wider

range of emotional responses that the sighted

observer or interlocutor could experience.

The online environment also offers a different

kind of facility of interaction. Blindness is often

experienced, by sighted users, as a stigma – as an

embodied feeling that the interaction flow is

collapsing, awkward or otherwise difficult. The

following account of a blind person renders this

obstacle intelligible: “There is an invisible wall

between the sighted and the visually impaired,” Ms.

Squarci said. “One of the women I interviewed, she

has been blind since she was 4 years old, she told me

sighted people are almost scared to deal with the

blind. Being blind is like speaking a language. If

sighted people don’t find eye contact – which is the

first hint of communication – they feel lost and they

don’t engage” (Gonzalez, 2013). The online

environment allows sighted users the comfort of

timing interaction as they see fit, also

unidirectionally or asynchronously; of taking time to

get acquainted to visually disabled portraits without

the anxiety that one might reveal discomfort and

therefore appear as prejudiced and socially

unskilled. That is, the online medium can be used as

a training ground, a sandbox for interaction between

sighted students and blind people. This could also

provide students the opportunity on reflecting on

their emotions when encountering blind people

online, helping with the emotional work required for

successful interaction in all social situations.

A very specific resource facilitated by the online

environment refers to the aesthetics of blind faces.

The discomfort of sighted people when looking at a

blind person can be confronted and strongly

challenged by visiting online exhibitions of visual

portraits of the blind, such as, among others Gaia

Squarci exhibition (Gonzalez, 2013); Sam Ivin

Photography (Ivin, n.d.); Julia Fullerton-Batten,

Blind (Fullerton-Batten, n.d.); Charlie Simokaitis,

Fade to white (Simokaitis, n.d.).

Through online exploration and ventures,

various dimensions of interaction between sighted

and blind people could be touched: the humor of

blindness, through its many mishaps, including the

ill-suited reactions of sighted people; its absurdity

and, conversely, its capacity to highlight meaning in

life; its malleability in being experienced as a

disability, as a repertoire of skills, or as utter

normality, depending, among others, on the tools

and relations that constitute the capability of any

human being from the perspective of distributed,

‘person-plus’ (Perkins, 1993) competence.

3.3.3 Blind Personas in Learning Practice

Teachers may dispose of anything from several

hours to semesters of study for introducing

accessibility, depending on the learning context.

Blind personas (Johansson & Messeter, 2005;

Pilgrim, 2002) are a flexible tool to acquaint

students with the aesthetics of accessible design and

to evaluate their learning and motivation. Students

can participate in individual or team projects to

construct and present blind personas as users of

specific technologies, highlighting relevant

background aspects of their lives and concrete

details of their experiences with technology.

Personas can be sketched in a couple of hours or

portrayed through in-depth research, depending on

available time. A persona offers a rich ground for

expressing the aesthetics of blind characters,

accessible tools, and accessible design. Personas are

also useful tools for design in general, beyond

accessibility concerns. Such learning projects take

advantage of the variety of students’ aesthetic

preferences and professional interests as a resource

for collaborative learning about the diversity of blind

people’s life experiences and technology use.

4 CONCLUSIONS

We analyze the literature concerning accessibility in

the computer science and engineering curriculum,

focusing on the repertories of arguments and

practices that authors put forward to support

students’ motivation. We find a persistent concern

IntroducingAccessibilityforBlindUserstoSightedComputerScienceStudents-TheAestheticsofTools,Pursuits,and

Characters

for arguing with students and readers that

accessibility is a reasonable, efficient, moral and

ultimately legally required pursuit. We also identify

empathy and mainstreaming as two motivational

drives distinct from the logical ‘web of arguments’,

instilling the interest for accessibility in emotions

and routines.

We propose an additional resource to consolidate

students’ persistent motivation: an aesthetic

appreciation of accessible tools, of working with

accessibility in mind, and of characters of blind

people – the direct beneficiaries of these pursuits.

We advance a first version of an aesthetic

motivational repertoire, including arguments,

practices, and online resources. Students’

construction and presentation of blind personas is a

flexible and useful learning tool to this purpose.

Harrison (2005) writes, reflecting on her

teaching: “If students are given the challenge of

designing an accessible site, they will rise to meet

that challenge” (p. 26). An aesthetic imagination

could make this venture even more engaging.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article has been supported by the research

project “Sociological imagination and disciplinary

orientation in applied social research”, with financial

support of ANCS / UEFISCDI with grant no. PN-II-

RU-TE-2011-3-0143, contract no. 14/28.10.2011.

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IntroducingAccessibilityforBlindUserstoSightedComputerScienceStudents-TheAestheticsofTools,Pursuits,and

Characters