The Implication of Accessibility and Privacy Legislation on Classroom Programming Tools

Data privacy and software accessibility are important issues. In order to enforce correct practice, many American states (and other countries) are introducing legislation to enforce data privacy and software accessibility for tools that are used in school classrooms. This has widespread implications for the use of programming tools in computer science classrooms in the USA and globally. The makers of such tools must ensure compliance with these laws and typically school districts are requiring certification of this before teachers can use them. This applies even if the tool is making no direct or indirect revenue, which adds a technical and legal burden even for free open-source tools. This birds-of-a-feather session is intended to bring together everyone affected by these changes -- teachers, school districts, policy-makers, and programming tool makers -- to discuss the ramifications of these issues and form ideas for best practices.