Creating software that works for everyone

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 IT and computing.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Professor John Grundy, Dr Hourieh Khalajzadeh and Dr Anuradha Madugalla, software engineers in the HumaniSE Lab at Monash University, Australia. They are developing software that is accessible for diverse end users.

• This resource also contains interviews with John, Hourieh and Anuradha and offers an insight into careers in software engineering. If your students have questions for the team, they can send them to them online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). John, Hourieh and Anuradha will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the team’s research and challenges them to create personas to ensure software is suitable for diverse users.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!