This dissertation examines the culture and climate of disabled people and the disability community within society and the engineering field and the experience of disabled students in higher education. The theoretical lenses utilized is the Technology Acceptance Model which emphasizes the importance of end user's perspectives, and the Social Model of Disability which sees the world and society as disabling rather than the imposition of disability on a person. The perception of disability in engineering is examined through the use of a systematic literature review within Chapter 3 by comparing general engineering academic literature and engineering education literature housed within the American Society of Engineering Education national database. Chapter 4 of this dissertation quantitatively examines the digital accessibility landscape of learning management systems utilized within engineering and engineering related courses that first and second year engineering students are required to take. Finally, Chapter 5 utilized a mixed method approach to examine disabled and non-disabled engineering students' perspectives on the usability of their Learning Management System within their engineering courses. The second part of this research study utilizes individual design interviews to have students redesign their Canvas experiences such that it minimizes digital accessibility barriers. Chapter 6 details tangible digital accessibility recommendations for developers, designers, and instructors/content managers. These recommendations are based on the results within the previous chapters of this dissertation. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation examines the culture and climate of disabled people and the disability community within society and the engineering field and the experience of disabled students in higher education. The research presented is understood by looking at disability as not a detriment to the individual and is imposed by society. Chapter 3 talks about how disabled people are and are not included within the engineering field. It compares a more general engineering academic literature with engineering education academic literature from American Society of Engineering Education national proceedings. The second study researches the accessibility of engineering and engineering related course websites from a higher education institution. This research shows the most common digital accessibility errors that are found along with the types of web pages that have the most accessibility errors. Finally, the third study researches the digital accessibility barriers encountered by disabled and nondisabled engineering students. These results are broken down by the specific disability that was disclosed by the participant. Chapter 6 details tangible digital accessibility recommendations for developers, designers, and instructors/content managers. These recommendations are based on the results within the previous chapters of this dissertation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/97630 |
| Date | 15 April 2020 |
| Creators | Spingola, Elizabeth Marie |
| Contributors | Engineering Education, Knight, David B., Bairaktarova, Diana, Reid, Kenneth J., Shivers, Carolyn |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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