Advice for Disabled Computing Students: Engaging in Research and Planning for Grad School
Students with disabilities are often well-suited for research, having strong problem-solving skills, creative thinking, and persistence. Exploring research and planning for graduate school can help disabled undergraduates prepare for research careers.
Students with disabilities are often well-suited for research, having strong problem-solving skills, creative thinking, and persistence. Exploring research and planning for graduate school can help disabled undergraduates prepare for research careers. When students start thinking about graduate research, the biggest shift to understand is the difference between undergraduate education, focused on consuming existing knowledge, and graduate education, where the goal is to produce new knowledge. Engaging in undergraduate research can help students determine whether they want to pursue a PhD, while simultaneously preparing them for graduate school as they explore topics of interest, build relationships with mentors, and develop a research portfolio that will strengthen applications to PhD programs.
Through the project AccessUR2PhD, disabled graduate students in computing shared their experiences and advice on pursuing undergraduate computing research and moving along the path to a PhD. They discussed exploring pathways into computing research, finding research opportunities, developing a sense of access needs, and applying to graduate school.
Pathways into Computing Research
Exploring research as an undergraduate can take many forms, including reading research papers in a class, working on a class project, conducting paid research or research for class credit, or participating in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. Participating in undergraduate research is a fantastic opportunity to collaborate, network, and learn from mentors, including peers, graduate students, postdocs (Post-doctoral researchers or fellows), and faculty.
The Computing Research Association’s UR2PhD (Undergraduate Research to PhD) program has resources to help undergraduates learn about research, including a pre-research experience course that serves as a basic introduction, a research training course to help build research skills, workshops to help students better understand research pathways, and workshops about applying to PhD programs.
Connecting with a faculty member outside of a formal application process may open up a path into research.
Finding Research Opportunities
Students with disabilities may face barriers to both accessing research opportunities and conducting research. For example, they may be less likely to have a faculty mentor who actively encourages them to pursue research, and they may be overlooked in selection processes that rely on success measures that can be misinterpreted without context. These factors can include not only grades but also gaps in enrollment, reduced course loads, or the disclosure of a disability.
That said, students interested in research should develop strategies for talking to faculty members about opportunities in their labs or department. This might mean approaching a professor after class, during office hours, or over email to express interest in research. Emails should be concise and focus on a student’s interest in the faculty member’s research. Connecting with a faculty member outside of a formal application process may open up a path into research. Students might attend office hours or reach out to faculty via email. Students can also find opportunities through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs), on the Pathways to Science website, or through professional networking sites such as LinkedIn.
Students with disabilities may be overlooked in selection processes when measures of success are misinterpreted without context. These measures can include grades, gaps in enrollment, reduced course loads, or the disclosure of a disability. If access barriers have impacted a student’s academic record, they might consider disclosing their disability in their discussions with faculty or their applications to REU programs. This could be a short statement explaining how a disability or health issue affected their grades, along with a description of strategies they used to improve their performance.
Traveling to another institution for summer research can be a great opportunity for a student to expand their horizons by meeting new mentors or engaging in new research areas. When looking at opportunities beyond their own campus, students should consider their needs with respect to health care, caretaking, accessible housing, and their support network. It may be challenging or prohibitively expensive to find temporary housing that is accessible, to locate temporary health care providers, or to meet other needs in a new city. Finding a research opportunity on a student’s home campus—or another local school—can help sidestep some of these barriers.
The accommodations that students with disabilities commonly use in undergraduate classrooms may not directly translate into a research environment.
Developing a Sense of Access Needs
The accommodations that students with disabilities commonly use in undergraduate classrooms may not directly translate into a research environment. By participating in undergraduate research, students with disabilities can determine what accommodations they might need in a research setting and practice self-advocacy skills to request those accommodations.
Whether engaging in research for credit or for pay, students can request accommodations from the disability services office. At some institutions, there are two different disability services offices - one that manages accommodations for students enrolled in courses and a second office that manages accommodations for employees. Students may need to work with the second of those two offices to get research accommodations.
Disability services offices can help arrange formal accommodations that might be useful in a research setting:
Sign language interpreting or real-time captioning
Ergonomic or adjustable furniture
Accessible versions of required readings or research articles
A research assistant who can perform inaccessible tasks (eg tasks that require vision or fine motor control)
Assistive technology or adaptive equipment
Adjusted timelines
A notetaker
Accommodations that address working relationships within the research group may also be helpful. Faculty may agree willingly to these arrangements or they can also be facilitated by disability services. There are a variety of accommodations for collaborative environments, such as labs and meetings:
Flexibility with regard to working hours, meeting location (in-person vs. online), length, frequency, and use of fidgets
Written directions
Meeting agendas provided in advance
Notetaking during meetings
A division of labor amongst teammates based on the accessibility of particular tasks
Other times, students may be able to self-accommodate using various strategies:
Noise-cancelling headphones to minimize distractions
Visual timers
Text-to-speech software used to give presentations
Organizational or notetaking tools
Careful preparation for meetings
Collaboration with peers on notetaking or other tasks
Recorded meetings or saved transcripts with advisors to refer back to (with permission)
It can be helpful to ask other students or mentors with disabilities what accommodations they use. Good places to look include student clubs related to disability, a disability community center on campus, or national programs like AccessComputing. Joining a disability community can provide insight into tools and accommodation recommendations, self-advocacy skills, and how to speak to one's own strengths. These communities may also bring to light other research or mentoring opportunities.
Choosing a PhD program isn’t easy... [and] students with disabilities may have additional concerns. They might want to learn about each program’s culture around accessibility, students’ experiences with disability services, accessible housing and transportation, or health care access in the area.
Applying to Graduate School
After exploring research as undergraduates, students who want to pursue a career in research may be interested in attending graduate school to pursue a PhD. PhD programs are designed to train students to conduct independent research. PhD graduates often become faculty or industry researchers. Some students may earn a master’s degree on the way to a PhD, but many do not.
Choosing a PhD program isn’t easy. Students may want to ask themselves: Where do I want to live? What type of research am I interested in? Do I have experience or relationships built with faculty or labs that I want to expand upon? Students with disabilities may have additional concerns. They might want to learn about each program’s culture around accessibility, students’ experiences with disability services, accessible housing and transportation, or health care access in the area.
An application to graduate school consists of many pieces, often including an application form, official transcripts, Graduate Records Exam (GRE) scores, letters of recommendation, and a personal statement. Before taking the GRE, review the Education Testing Services accommodation request guidelines. Getting accommodations for the GRE can require extra lead time (weeks to even months, depending on the type of request and access to documentation of a disability), so students should start planning early.
Requesting letters of recommendation takes careful consideration. Strong recommendation letters hinge on choosing the right people. When able, students should choose writers who truly know their work and character. Students can ask potential recommenders directly, “Can you provide a strong letter for me?” Students should provide the recommender with their resume and a written list of their goals, academic achievements, recommended highlights, application materials, due dates, and how to submit each letter. If the letter writer knows about a student’s disability, the student should communicate clearly about whether or not they can disclose that information in their letter.
Decisions about disclosure of a disability are highly personal. Just like when applying to research opportunities, students should consider whether they want to disclose their disability in their graduate school application materials. Some students might weave disability disclosure into their personal statement, especially when it aligns with research goals and skills or when it helps to tell their story. For example, do they have a firsthand perspective or a unique relationship to the field they are pursuing? Did they take a break one semester due to health-related needs? Did their disability impact their grades? A student can strengthen their application by showing that they have developed strategies that help enable success.
Upon receiving an admissions offer to a graduate program, disabled students may want to learn more about accommodations and culture in that program. This might include meeting with the disability services office, seeking out other disabled students to learn about their experiences, or talking to current graduate students in the lab or field the student is pursuing.
Even if a student doesn’t disclose disability-related information in their applications, meeting with the disability services office is a key step in securing accommodations once a student enrolls in a program. Some disabled students register with disability services even if they don’t anticipate asking for accommodations- just in case they need accommodations later. The process of acquiring accommodations takes time, so being prepared is an excellent way to ensure a successful graduate school experience.
The Computing Research Association’s Undergraduate Research to PhD program (UR2PhD) engages undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty mentors, universities and colleges, and non-profits to increase the quantity and quality of mentored research experiences while sustaining student interest in research.
About AccessUR2PhD
The goal of AccessUR2PhD is to support individuals with disabilities on the pathway from being an undergraduate researcher to earning a PhD in a computing field. The project is funded by the Computing Research Association UR2PhD program and administered by AccessComputing staff. Learn more about accessibility by joining AccessComputing's student team, partner consortium, or community of practice: Apply online to join..
This publication is part of a series created based on feedback from disabled graduate students in computing at universities across the US, as well as recent research on students with disabilities and on the writing of disabled people about their experiences in academia:
