Increase accessibility technology within STEM research and education spaces to improve disability representation in STEM fields.
Key Messages:
· Inaccessibility of STEM education and research for students with physical disabilities is precluding a significant percentage of the population from filling STEM jobs.
· Jobs requiring STEM education and expertise are growing to meet technological advancements, and filling these roles is essential for continuing technology research and development.
· Increasing the accessibility of STEM research and training will help fill STEM jobs with people that can provide unique and diverse insight.
· Recommendations:
- Research departments should update policies to increase use of free and low-cost accessibility technology in STEM research workspaces, labs, and conferences.
- State governments should allocate funding to higher education entities for updating accessibility technology into their workspaces.
- State and internal research grants should call for proposal submissions that develop assistive technology for use in research and education labs. Research grant proposals should also require budget allocation for accessibility accommodations.
Executive Summary:
Significant barriers currently prevent the inclusion of people with disabilities into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) higher education and research spaces. People with physical disabilities comprise only 3% of the STEM workforce, even though they account for approximately 13% of the United States population. Jobs requiring STEM education and expertise have grown by 34%, and filling these roles is essential for technological research and development, as well as economic growth. To increase the inclusion of people with disabilities in STEM fields, colleges and universities need to increase the use of accessibility technology within STEM spaces. Accordingly, state legislators should allocate funding for adoption of accessibility technology in higher education STEM labs, as well as allocate state funding to the development of new accessibility technologies.
Main Text:
It was recently announced that a chemistry department at a state university in Colorado currently falls under the category of “actively exclusive” towards people with disabilities. The primary reason for this rating was the fact that the only elevator in the old chemistry building often breaks down, thereby making it impossible for people with wheelchairs or mobility limitations to access the classrooms and labs in this building. Outside of the elevator issue, the department still qualifies as non-inclusive, particularly if you look within the research labs and offices. Inaccessible fume hoods, out-of-reach emergency shower handles, and in-person-only seminars are commonplace. The lack of accessibility accommodations in research spaces is excluding people with disabilities from STEM education and careers. Nationally, about 9–13% of the U.S. population has a physical disability, however people with physical disabilities made up only 3% of the STEM workforce, and data shows a large exit point of people with disabilities from STEM fields during higher education.
Jobs requiring STEM education and expertise have grown by 34%, and filling these roles is essential for continuing technological research and development. Increasing the accessibility of STEM research and training will help fill STEM jobs with people that can provide diverse and unique insight. Additionally, research programs design new technologies including those that can be used as assistive technologies. Including people who will use assistive technology in the design process will bolster the research and development of these technologies.
Current law requires employers to “provide a reasonable accommodation to employees with disabilities unless the employer can show that the accommodation would require significant difficulty or expense.” Therefore, a substantial barrier to improving the accessibility of STEM research spaces is the lack of money to do so. The majority of funding for higher education comes from state government taxes, and Colorado notably ranks 49th in the nation for higher education spending per student. This is approximately $900 million below the U.S. average.
To increase accessibility of STEM research and higher education, three fundamental steps should be taken. First, research departments should update policies to increase use of accessibility technology in their workspaces. There are many free and low-cost accessibility tools readily available for universities and colleges to use in lab spaces and for meetings and seminars. Auto-generated captions can be used free-of-charge for virtual meetings, and posters and presentations can be easily made to follow accessibility guidelines. Lab equipment can be strategically placed to be within reach from a sitting position and include large-print and braille labels.
Second, states should allocate more funding to higher education to integrate up-to-date accessibility technology into their workspaces. This funding should also specify and allocate resources for laboratory and research-specific accommodations like fume hoods that are wheelchair-accessible, instruments that can provide audible readouts, and visual cues to supplement audio alarms on equipment.
Third, state and internal university research grants should require that proposal submissions include budget allocation for accessibility accommodations pertinent to the research projects as well as call for proposals of research projects to develop assistive technology that can improve laboratory accessibility, like programs that can scan and convert technical information like chemical and mathematical equations into speech; a limitation of current text recognition programs. Technological developments such as Virtual Reality and 3D printing could allow STEM graduate students and researchers to remotely operate equipment or convert data that is typically analyzed via images on the computer (like microscope images or spectra) and convert them into 3D printed maps for analysis by blind/low vision individuals.
