Despite recent initiatives aimed at improving accessibility, the field of digital accessibility remains markedly behind contemporary advancements in the software industry as a large number of real world software and web applications continue to fall short of accessibility requirements. A persisting skills deficit within the existing technology workforce has been an enduring impediment, hindering organizations from delivering truly accessible software products. This, in turn, elevates the risk of isolating and excluding a substantial portion of potential users. In this paper, we report lessons learned from a training program for teaching digital accessibility using the Communities of Practice (CoP) framework to industry professionals. We recruited 66 participants from a large multi-national software company and assigned them to two groups: one participating in a CoP and the other using self-paced learning. We report experiences from designing the training program, conducting the actual training, and assessing the efficiency of the two approaches. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for practitioners in Learning and Development teams and educators in designing accessibility courses for industry professionals.

翻译：尽管近期推出了诸多改善无障碍性的举措，但数字无障碍领域仍明显落后于软件行业的当代进展，大量真实世界的软件和网络应用持续未能达到无障碍要求。现有技术劳动力中持续存在的技能缺口始终是阻碍因素，使组织难以交付真正无障碍的软件产品，进而增加了孤立和排斥大量潜在用户的风险。本文报告了采用实践社区（CoP）框架对行业专业人员进行数字无障碍教学培训项目的经验教训。我们从一家大型跨国软件公司招募了66名参与者，并将其分为两组：一组参与实践社区，另一组采用自主进度学习。我们分享了从培训方案设计、实际培训实施到两种方法效果评估的经验。基于这些发现，我们为学习与发展团队的实践者及教育工作者提供了面向行业专业人员设计无障碍课程的建议。