Doctoral candidate Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou successfully defended his dissertation, "A Pragmatic and Human-centered Approach to Promoting Software Accessibility: Design, Education, Governance," on April 3.
His committee included Assistant Professor Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo, Associate Professor Rachel F. Adler, Professor Ted Underwood, Assistant Professor Jessie Chin, Professor Michael Twidale, and Xin Tong, assistant professor at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou).
Abstract: This dissertation explores three approaches to software accessibility: design, education, and governance. It aims to facilitate discussion toward a pragmatic and integrated approach to accessibility. The design study spotlights cancer survivors’ impairments and resulting software challenges and proposes simple yet practical accessibility guidelines to accommodate the software needs of cancer survivors. The education study validates the possibility of teaching software accessibility through disability simulation games before post-secondary education. The governance chapter examines the status quo of governance approaches to improving software accessibility and informs future legislation. In synthesizing the commonalities and differences between the three approaches to software accessibility, it is argued that each approach has advantages and limitations — they ultimately complement each other. An integrated approach combining design, education, and governance interventions should be used to address software accessibility issues and create a more inclusive software ecosystem.