Understanding the Relationships Between Disability, Engineering, and the Design of Engineering Course Websites Through Disabled Engineering Students' Perspectives

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.