Making STEM Research Accessible to People with Disabilities

Whether you are a STEM researcher with a disability, someone supervising a student with a disability, or a person just trying to make STEM more accessible and welcoming for people with disabilities, here are a few resources. Most of these assume that students (and not the researchers) have disabilities.

National Organizations Increasing Access to STEM Fields

• The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Entry Point! program. Search for "disabilities" for more at the AAAS as well.
• A list of national organizations working on STEM access, as well as training materials - from DO-IT at the University of Washington

Making Labs and STEM Courses More Accessible

DO-IT at the University of Washington has several tips for professors that may also be useful for researchers:

• Setting up and teaching in accessible science labs
• Checklist for making engineering labs more accessible
• Checklist for making computer labs more accessible

Journal Articles of Possible Interest

• The Journal of Chemical Health and Safety, focused on students with disabilities in its open access January-February 2016 issue (Volume 23, Issue 1). Pertinent topics are: training blind and visually impaired chemistry students, chemistry and biological research with deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and service dogs in chemistry laboratories.