Abstract
Over 61 million adults in the United States live with a disability. Approximately 12.2 percent of these individuals experience a mobility impairment that affects their daily life. Despite these demographic realities, modern infrastructure routinely excludes disabled individuals from participating fully in physical and digital spaces. At the University of Virginia, students navigating Grounds encounter physical barriers such as unmapped construction zones, broken elevators, and steep grades. Online, users face a parallel digital barrier. A 2024 analysis by WebAIM evaluated the top one million internet home pages and found that 94.8 percent failed basic Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The overarching problem connecting these two environments is a systemic failure to implement appropriate design. Creators of physical systems and digital platforms treat accessibility as a secondary consideration rather than a foundational requirement. My thesis portfolio addresses this exact accessibility gap across two domains. The technical project provides a functional mobile application to route users around physical barriers at the University of Virginia. The sociotechnical research paper investigates the structural educational failures that cause digital accessibility standards to fail globally.
The technical project details the development and evaluation of WahooWay, an accessibility-centered navigation application. We built this system to solve the limitations of current university resources. The University of Virginia provides static accessibility maps as PDF files. These static documents require manual interpretation and cannot display temporary hazards like blocked entrances or elevator outages. To address this, our team engineered a dynamic prototype focused on the Engineer's Way section of Grounds. We constructed the application using Flutter, Mapbox, and Firebase. The system generates personalized routes based on user mobility profiles, specifically prioritizing step-free paths and accessible entrances. The
core feature is a real-time hazard reporting system. Users submit obstacle reports with specific map locations, and the routing algorithm instantly diverts other users around the reported barrier. We evaluated the system through a structured beta testing program. The results confirmed the system's functional success. Every participant generated an accessible route on their first attempt, created hazard alerts without assistance, and successfully altered their mobility preferences. Sixty percent of testers stated they would rely on the application for real-world campus navigation, and 80 percent agreed they would recommend it to a peer. The project demonstrates that community-sourced data provides a more reliable navigation experience than static maps.
The sociotechnical research paper explores why the digital equivalent of these accessibility barriers persists. The project asks to what extent the gap in developer education regarding the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines influences the failure to implement accessible web standards. The World Wide Web Consortium published these technical standards in 2008, yet compliance remains exceptionally low. I argue that this implementation failure stems from a disconnect between complex compliance documents and foundational developer training. To investigate this, my methodology focused exclusively on a literature review of current pedagogical practices and formal curriculum audits of seven popular web development educational platforms. I evaluated the structural placement of accessibility lessons within the introductory HTML modules of platforms such as freeCodeCamp, The Odin Project, and Harvard University's CS50W. The results revealed a systemic exclusion of inclusive design principles. Elite university courses completely omitted digital accessibility from their curricula. Other platforms, like Frontend Masters, relegated the topic to optional modules placed at the very end of their curriculum tracks. Using the frameworks of Appropriate Design and Technological Momentum, I concluded that this educational structure establishes a flawed
governing mentality. The industry trains developers to prioritize visual design and rapid deployment over semantic structure and keyboard operability. The digital economy will continue to exclude disabled users until platforms integrate accessibility as a core engineering requirement in the first lesson.
These two projects confirm that accessibility fails when treated as a retroactive addition. WahooWay illustrated that overcoming physical barriers requires systems designed specifically for mobility needs from the start, rather than layering general directions over a static map. The sociotechnical research demonstrated that the internet remains inaccessible because our educational institutions treat inclusive design as an optional feature. Both projects succeeded in defining clear paths forward. The technical team established a scalable codebase ready for expansion beyond Engineer's Way to the broader university campus. For the sociotechnical problem, future research must track whether upcoming legal mandates, such as the European Accessibility Act, successfully force educational bootcamps to rewrite their curricula. Together, the portfolio outlines both a local solution for the university and a systemic critique of global software engineering practices.
