Accessibility Education for Software Engineers: Evaluating the Impact of Game-Based Learning
Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus
How they used Delve
Computing education researchers at BITS Pilani's Goa campus used Delve to code semi-structured interviews with 25 software engineering students about a game-based accessibility course. The first author and a senior student researcher coded inductively in two phases, in vivo then axial, met weekly to refine the codebook, and reached a Krippendorff's alpha of 0.84.
“The cleaned transcripts were then imported into Delve, a web-based qualitative data analysis tool. Following Saldaña’s methodology [78], the first author, and a CS senior student researcher specializing in educational technology and human–computer interaction, conducted a two-phase inductive coding process [...] The final intercoder reliability, calculated using Krippendorff’s Alpha, was 0.84, indicating strong agreement between coders.”
- Field
- Computing education / accessibility
- Data
- Semi-structured Google Meet interviews with 25 of the 125 participating students, stratified by self-reported accessibility expertise (15 men, 10 women), averaging 31 minutes
- Approach
- Mixed methods: pre-post surveys with 125 students, and semi-structured interviews analysed with Saldaña's two-phase inductive coding (in vivo then axial) in a grounded theory approach, with weekly codebook meetings and Krippendorff's alpha of 0.84 between two coders
- Data types
- Interviews, Open-ended survey responses
Abstract
Background : Digital inaccessibility remains a significant barrier to inclusion. WebAIM’s 2025 report indicates that only 5.2% of the top one million web site homepages fully conform to accessibility standards, reflecting a marginal improvement of 3.1% in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliance over the past 6 years. This stagnation underscores a persistent skills gap within the technology sector, primarily attributed to software engineers’ limited foundational knowledge and technical expertise in digital accessibility. While academic institutions have begun integrating accessibility into computing curricula, effective training strategies for practicing software engineers remain underexplored. Methods : We developed two serious games, A11yMythBuster and A11yBugHunter , designed to enhance accessibility awareness and technical proficiency. The design and evaluation of these games use the Design-Based Research (DBR) approach, with this study representing the first iteration of the iterative development cycle. The impact of these games was assessed through a mixed-methods study involving 125 software engineers. Data collection methods included pre–post surveys, gameplay data, and semi-structured interviews to capture changes in both skills and attitudes. Results : Participants demonstrated substantial improvements in technical accessibility skills following gameplay interventions. The study also revealed a marked attitudinal shift, with engineers showing increased commitment to prioritizing accessibility in their software development practices. Both quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback indicated that the game-based approach effectively bridged knowledge gaps while fostering cultural change within development teams. Conclusions : Game-based learning can effectively address both technical and attitudinal barriers to digital accessibility implementation among software engineers. Our findings suggest that serious games offer a scalable strategy to advance accessibility education in the tech industry. This study contributes to the growing literature on innovative, evidence-based interventions for digital accessibility education and provides a practical approach to improving WCAG compliance in software development.
Citation
P D Parthasarathy, Swaroop Joshi (2025). Accessibility Education for Software Engineers: Evaluating the Impact of Game-Based Learning. ACM Transactions on Computing Education. https://doi.org/10.1145/3785367