The introduction of a topic on accessibility in several engineering degrees

Abstract

Together with the trend towards engineering designs more accessible to handicapped people there is an increasing concern at the engineering faculties to include topics related to accessibility in their programs. Engineers must be aware that handicapped people use technology and designs must take into account this fact. This paper explains how a topic on accessibility was started at a technical faculty as a cross topic to five different engineering degrees: Electrical, Electronics and Automatic Control, Industrial Product Design, Electronic Systems and Computer Science. The introduction process is explained along with the teaching methodology. Results after the first two courses are good in general but present some issues. The main issue to be corrected is that students from different branches achieve different academic performances.