AT Around Us

Last revised date: 9/17/2025

Overview

The goal of this assignment is to give you experience with seeking out first-person accounts of disability experiences with technology. It will also give you experience with presenting accessibly and expose you to a wide range of accessibility technologies.

Required Competencies

When you turn in this homework, also turn in these competencies

Assignment Details

Assignment Requirements

To complete this assignment you will need to do the following:

1. Select one examples of an accessibility technology or disability hack

Select one example of accessibility technology, or disability hack, that you will be presenting about. An accessibility technology is something that is used by a person with a disability to increase accessibility. It can be something that is included in the infrastructure (such as a curb cut) or something that is used by an individual (such as Proloque2Go, a symbol-based communication system), or something that was not designed for accessibility but is useful (such as these 5 disability life hacks)

Your technology should improve computer access (such as sticky keys). or access to “the world” at large (such as Microsoft’s Seeing AI). This should be something you can try yourself

In addition, try not to pick the same thing as someone else in the class and do not choose really really common things (like elevators and glasses). Also, you should pick something that *expands your knowledge of accessibility technology. Other considerations that could help when searching for technology:

  • Does it address infrastructure (like curb cuts) or is it more individual (like a screen magnifier)?
  • Was it designed for the disability community (like a screen reader) or is it a mainstream technology being used to address accessibility needs (like voice assistants have).

2. Find A First Person Account

For your accessibility technology, find a first person accounts by a person with a disability that is not an advertisement describing each technology and how they use it. You will use this account to hand in the First Person Account Competency, so it is recommended you read that and select an account that meets those requirements.

Ideally, you will find a video account showing the technology in use. Try searching for “howto” or try searching first for vloggers who have a disability, and then looking in their channels for technology reviews. Also ask for help on our class discussion site if you are having trouble. If you cannot find a video, you can look for a written account, such as a blog or review. In this case, it still needs to be written by a person with a disability who would benefit from the AT that you are trying to learn about. This may influence your choice of technologies, it is OK to iterate.

3. Try it yourself

While some technologies may be expensive or hard to get, many accessibility technologies are easily available and some are even re-purposed everyday items. Your technology should be something you can try, and you should try it out.

4. Summarize your findings in two slides

  • What is it
  • what disabilities it supports Think broadly about this, and try to find evidence for your ideas. For example, audio books and screen readers are used by people who are blind or low vision, as well as people who are dyslexic, or cannot look at a screen without experiencing chronic illness symptoms.
  • What you learned by trying it
  • What you learned by watching the first person account (including good things and flaws)

5. Find a disability dongle

Next, find a Disability Dongle. Read over the 10 principals of disability justice and pick two that you think it violates.

6. Summarize your dongle in two slides

  • On the first slide, define both principles, and discuss how the dongle violates them.
  • On the second, you will analyze whether it is ableist, how disability perspectives did or did not inform it, and whether/how it oversimplifies disability and identity.

7. Make sure your slides are accessible

Go over the accessible documents competency. You should make sure your slide is accessible, and turn it in as the first handin of your Accessible Documents Competency

Assessment & Handin Process

The handin is broken up by competency

Accessible Documents (rubric)

  • Your writeup (Microsoft word) or PowerPoint. Note: do not submit a PDF. We expect your submission to be a Word or Google Doc.
  • A list of images and the ALT text you wrote for each of them
  • Which best practices are demonstrated in this document or PowerPoint
  • A screen shot showing the accessibility checker results for your document or PowerPoint

Finding First Person Accounts (rubric)

  • A link to the first person account
  • A reflection answering the following questions
    • What first person account did you find and does it meet the requirements for a first person account described above
    • What are the barriers and opportunities the person described?
    • What technology did they describe using?
    • How might what you learned extend beyond this specific person, disability and/or technology?
    • A list of additional resources you used to answer these questions (first person accounts, research papers, etc). If you use Generative AI, you still need to check and cite relevant references.

Disability Model Analysis (rubric)

  • Define and explain two disability justice principles. For each, explain how the subject fails or succeeds to meet that?
  • Address the three additional points
    • Is it ableist?
    • Is it informed by disabled perspectives?
    • Does it oversimplify disability/identity?

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