Exploring Accessibility Management in Digital Education Publishing

Abstract

By law, colleges and universities must provide people with disabilities with access to their digital activities, services, and programs. The problem is that when software development teams build digital educational products and services that support higher education institutions inaccessibly, they may exclude students with certain types of disabilities. Since product managers lead software development teams, this phenomenological qualitative study explored the lived experiences of product managers in a global digital educational publishing company with respect to accessibility. Fourteen product managers who expressed interest and met the sampling criteria participated in semistructured interviews and member-checking of transcripts. The analysis of these transcripts revealed seven major themes and eight sub-themes indicating their perceptions of accessibility. Findings from this investigation can contribute to identifying ways in which accessibility training and policy can embed product managers’ responsibilities and improve organizational practices for integrating accessibility into software development lifecycle processes.