Medium RPP, High School Strand: Collaborative Research: AccesCSforAll: Making High School Computer Science Accessible

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The University of Washington and the University of Nevada Las Vegas will collaborate on AccessCSforAll with the goal of including more K-12 students with disabilities in computing classes. The CS for All initiative must address the approximately nine million K-12 students who are identified as having a disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. These students should have access to quality computer science education, but there are often significant barriers to their participation. Some of these barriers include inaccessible tools and curriculum. Building on the team's previous work with developing an accessible version of AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) and leading the professional development for teachers who specialize in students with disabilities, AccessCSforAll will develop new tools and curricula that can be adopted by a variety of development and curriculum providers. In addition, AccessCSforAll will extend its researcher practitioner partnership (RPP) to include CS curriculum providers, in-service and pre-service providers, and organizations that support K-12 CS teachers. This partnership will lead to the adoption of more accessible tools and curricula in the teaching of computer science nationally. This project includes partnerships with developers of accessible tools and curricula for K-12 students and will work as a national resource for CS teachers to help them better include students with disabilities in their classes. It will create and deploy an age appropriate accessible blocks-based programming environment for the web called Quorum Blocks. Quorum Blocks will allow students to code accessibly in blocks mode or text mode. Curriculum providers and teachers can embed it into any curriculum of their own design. The primary goal of the project is thus to scale up past efforts to make computer science classes equitable and welcoming to all students in the United States. This expansion will work towards reaching the approximately 16% of high school students who have a disability. AccessCSforAll represents one of the first comprehensive steps to provide that scaling up to include these students in computer science.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.