WAI Curricula Task Force Work Statement

This is a Task Force of the Education and Outreach Working Group.

The Task Force operates under the EOWG charter 2017.

Status

This Work Statement for the WAI Curricula resource (hereafter referred to as "Task Force") has been approved on March 27 by EOWG and is now active.

Background

The WAI Curricula is an EOWG resource that helps to:

Create courses about web accessibility.
Include web accessibility in existing courses.
Compare and select web accessibility courses.

The Education and Outreach Working Group developed and published the first iteration of:

The opening page of the resource] -- It defines its core concepts and provides an outline for future work.
The curriculum Introduction to web accessibility -- It addresses a variety of roles such as developers, designers, authors, managers, and testers. The curriculum:
- Explores how some people with disabilities use the Web.
- Introduces core concepts of web Accessibility and relates them to usability and inclusion.
- Presents some business arguments for accessibility.
- Introduces the principles of web accessibility.
- Examines some first checks to start assessing web accessibility.
- Provides pointers to some strategies on how to plan an manage accessibility.

An implementation of the first curriculum can be found in the Introduction to web accessibility MOOC, developed by W3C in cooperation with UNESCO IITE.

Objectives

The objective of this Task Force is to engage with community stakeholders for establishing a well-vetted curricula for a variety of roles involved in web accessibility. Specific objectives are to:

Refine the already published curricula based on community feedback and currently open issues.
Develop specific curricula on web accessibility for developers, designers, authors, testers, and managers; as described in the WAI Curricula Requirements Analysis page.
Develop supporting materials for a variety of use cases, as specified in the Requirements analysis for supporting materials page. These use cases include:
- Instructors who need to include Wweb accessibility in courses.
- HR or procurement professionals who need to select courses that are appropriate for their particular needs.

Approach

Curricula will be developed on a modular basis. Course creators can use the modules they need to assemble their courses. These modules will contain:

Learning Outcomes -- Core knowledge that students should acquire and should be able to demonstrate after completion of courses based on these modules.
Teaching Ideas -- Support instructors in their teaching process.
Ideas to support assessment -- Provide ideas to develop assessment activities.
Teaching Resources -- Text, audio, and video-based materials to expand knowledge about the contents of the module.

Note: This Task Force is not intended to develop specific courses on web Accessibility. Instead, it will put together the materials for course creators to develop their own.

The lead editor is Daniel Montalvo. He will be providing Task Force participants with the base materials for discussion. Task Force members may be asked to provide general input on the materials, as well as to propose possible learning outcomes, teaching ideas, and ideas to assess knowledge.

The following is an estimated timeline for work deliverables. It is subject to change and will be updated as work progresses.:

Introduction to web accessibility curriculum -- First iteration published. Further refinements expected.
Draft Developing Accessible Content -- Due by June 2020
Future work Designing Accessible Content -- Due by December 2020
Future work Authoring Accessible Content -- Due by June 2021
Future work Testing Content for Accessibility -- Due by December 2021

The Task Force activities will be developed in close coordination with EOWG. EOWG as a whole will have the chance to review major drafts from the Task Force and will take the final decision about approval to publish.

Communication

Communications within the Task Force are publicly available through the following mechanisms:

The Task Force mailing list.
Weekly Task Force teleconferences.
Task Force updates and feedback in EOWG teleconferences.
Curricula first page on WAI website.
WAI Curricula (editor's draft).
open issues page on the WAI Curricula repository.

Participation

Task Force participants will be participants of EOWG; and should be acquainted with training on web accessibility, or with curricula development; and should actively contribute to the work of the Task Force, including:

At least 2 hours per week of work.
Participate in Task Force teleconferences.
Remain current on Task Force mailing list and respond in a timely manner to postings and surveys.
Assist in preparing Task Force deliverables for discussion.

To get more information about participating in this Task Force, please email Daniel Montalvo and Shadi Abou-Zahra.

W3C Team Leadership

The Task Force facilitator is Daniel Montalvo.
The lead editor for the WAI Curricula resource is Daniel Montalvo.

Participants

Task Force participants are:

Daniel Montalvo (W3C/WAI)
Estel·la Oncins Noguer (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Howard Kramer (University of Colorado Boulder)
Carlos Duarte (University of Lisbon)
David Sloan (TPGi)
Donal Fitzpatrick
Gerhard Nussbaum
Sarah Lewthwaite (University of Southampton)
Brent Bakken (Pearson)
Brian Elton (TPGi)

Previous Participants

Shadi Abou-Zahra
Dónal Rice
Roberto Perez

Acknowledgments

Work for the WAI Curricula is developed with support from the WAI-Guide Project funded by the European Commission (EC) under the Horizon 2020 program (Grant Agreement 822245).