Abstract:

The National University of La Plata (UNLP) is a public university in Argentina, third in the country in number of students, with more than 117 thousand undergraduate students and even more postgraduate students. Degrees in the most diverse disciplines are taught, from Computer Science, Social Sciencies to Aerospace Engineering, through health careers such as Medical Sciences, Dentistry and Veterinary Sciences. Founded on April 8, 1897, in 1905 it became national. It also has pre-university schools.

According to the World Health Organization, 1.3 billion people, 1 in 6 people worldwide, suffer from some type of significant disability and this number is increasing. Furthermore, people with disabilities are more likely to experience adverse socioeconomic outcomes than people without disabilities.

In this context, in 2000 the University Disability Commission (CUD) was created at the UNLP. The CUD at the UNLP is an area whose purpose is to design policies and carry out strategies and lines of action that contribute to the fulfillment of the constitutional rights of people with disabilities. This is a path to transform Public Universities into accessible and non-exclusive ones.

In the Computer Science School, with an average of 4,000 students, accessibility is addressed in a transversal, comprehensive and multidisciplinary way, where different areas and roles are involved. All actions related to the promotion, application and inclusion and accessibility approach, respond to and defend the spirit of both national and international regulations and laws such as the convention on the rights of people with disabilities, the national law 26653 on accessibility in official sites, the UNLP Statute and the Higher Education Law.

In particular, technology accessibility refers to the ability to access computer applications and their contents by all people, regardless of the disability (physical, perceptual, intellectual or technical) they present or those derived from the context of use (technological or environmental). In this sense, since the beginning of the 90s, issues of human factors in human-computer interaction, usability, user-centered design have been addressed both in research and teaching, and since 2002, on digital accessibility. Final theses were completed, some of which received government recognition; final projects of the degree subjects were carried out for social organizations, articles presented at conferences, among other activities.

The objective of this article is to present the different lines of action carried out in the Computer Science School from the point of view of accessibility at the management, academic, research and extension levels. As well as recommendations for making accessible material and developing accessible websites based on the experience acquired, are also included. In addition, the policies and actions carried out that allowed an improvement in the permanence, entry and exit of students with disabilities will be mentioned. These actions have been carried out for more than 10 years uninterruptedly and comprehensively.

Keywords:

Accessibility, inclusion policies, Computer Science career.