Making Hour of Code more accessible
New accessibility filters are available for activity searches on hourofcode.com.
Code.org believes computer science is foundational for all students — regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, identity, family income, neighborhood, or where they are from. As such, we work to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the inclusion and full participation of any group in computer science, including students and educators with disabilities.
Our goal is to close gaps in access to computer science education for students with disabilities and make improvements to our tools based on this data — while incorporating feedback from our stakeholders to support the learning needs of all students.
All of Code.org’s Hour of Code activities offer one or more accessibility accommodations,but to make the entire Hour of Code event more accessible, we’ve added new Accessibility filter options on hourofcode.com/learn. Options include: screen reader, text-to-speech, keyboard navigation, captions, and high-contrast. The new filter list can be found among the other filter options. Plus, when you select any Hour of Code activity, you will now find information about the accessibility accommodations that activity offers.
Recommended activities
- Screen reader: Coding in Astronomy from Quorum
- Text-to-speech: Hello World from Code.org
- Keyboard navigation: Escape Estate from Minecraft: Education Edition (Note: Requires download of Minecraft: Education Edition)
- Captions: Dance Party from Code.org
- High-contrast: NASA’s Space Jam from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory/Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Continuing to improve
While we’re excited to offer these accessibility improvements, we recognize that we have a long way to go. Code.org is in the early stages of a plan to get our platform compliant with WCAG 2.0 Level A. See our plan at code.org/accessibility. If you have recommendations to help us improve the accessibility of our tools and resources, please reach out to our support team.
We hope these new features will allow even more students to participate in this year’s Hour of Code event.
— The Code.org team
Code.org is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to every student having the opportunity to learn computer science as part of their core K-12 education. We are publicly funded by people like you. If you would like to join our commitment to computer science education by making a donation today, please click here. For questions, please contact Development at giving@code.org or (206) 593–5521. Thank you.
