What we have attempted to do in the previous pages was to bring into the conversation surrounding usability, as it is taught in the professional and/or technical writing curricula, a fuller discussion of access, namely one that includes disabled users. It is our hope that the quick review of current and popular texts used in teaching technical writing, for example, reveals something of a need in this area. With little exception, these texts fail to address successfully access that includes disabled users. Not infrequently, when they do address disabilities, they address writing about disabled persons rather than writing for disabled persons.
What this means for us as teachers, not only of technical writing courses but also of composition courses that feature design for the screen (via teaching electronic portfolios or otherwise), is that design instruction must include better-informed conversations on accessibility. And whereas our work has not been novel with regard to access and usability, it does bring into the arena of composition studies and the technical writing curriculum a heightened awareness. The work that we do, then, as teachers in the classroom on a daily basis supports a culture of both appreciation and accommodation for diverse needs. We today acculturate our students and inform them on such issues so that tomorrow they may go on with their lives familiar with the many and diverse needs of readers and users of screen-based texts.
If we are teaching design, we should be sure to teach design that maximizes accessibility for all users. And we should teach design that accounts for assistive technologies not as an afterthought, as something to be added just before a site goes live, but as a part of the planning and development our the site from its conception. After all, developers often find that such planning does not necessarily mean additional time; nor does it mean additional expense. Planning, then, should be considered an essential curricular outcome. That is, teaching the students to plan projects early in the design process (e.g., mockups and thumbnail sketches of either hard copy or screen-based texts) helps them make better decisions both for intended audiences and for the purposes and uses of their work.