Mentoring Students with Disabilities Pursuing Computing Research Opportunities
People with disabilities often develop creative ways of navigating their daily lives in environments and systems that are inaccessible. This creativity is highly valuable in research settings; however, students with disabilities are underrepresented in undergraduate research and in PhD programs for a variety of reasons. They may not receive the same encouragement as non-disabled students to pursue research, or they may face stigma due to their disability. Barriers in physical environments, inaccessible research tools, or difficulty securing accommodations can also limit participation. Faculty and graduate student mentors can be valuable mentors to disabled students, helping them succeed in rigorous PhD programs and research.
Participating in undergraduate research helps disabled students better understand their access needs in research. This is particularly valuable for students entering graduate school, because the most commonly used accommodations in undergraduate classrooms may not directly translate to research environments. By participating in undergraduate research, students can determine what accommodations they might need in a research setting and practice self-advocacy skills.
Mentoring students with disabilities doesn’t require having a disability or being knowledgeable about a student’s specific disability. Among students with similar disabilities, students may experience the disability differently and have different access needs. A mentor should focus on student requests and help co-develop strategies to ensure their needs are met. Asking specific questions about disability is not appropriate and, in many cases, is a violation of the law.
Mentors who don’t know much about people with disabilities might be interested in learning more about disability culture, accessible technology, or the experiences of people with disabilities by exploring the resource list below. Note that some people prefer person-first language (eg, a person with a disability, a person who is blind); others prefer identity-first language (e.g., a disabled person, a deaf person). We use both to reflect the variety of opinions.
Through a project called AccessUR2PhD, disabled graduate students in computing shared their experiences in research as undergraduates and graduate students. The experiences they shared can provide mentors with important insights into how to support students with disabilities in their research groups.
For students with disabilities, stigma or issues surrounding executive function may make finding a mentor, or more generally navigating the hidden curriculum [of getting into research], more difficult.
Barriers Along the Pathways into Computing Research
In many computing departments, research and research pathways are not clearly explained or formally introduced to students. Instead, getting involved often depends on navigating an informal hidden curriculum that students must become familiar with to start their research career. Some students are encouraged by a faculty mentor to get involved with research. Other students have to approach potential mentors, which can be challenging. For students with disabilities, stigma or issues surrounding executive function may make finding a mentor, or more generally navigating the hidden curriculum, more difficult. At the UW Allen School, there’s an “introduction to research in computing” course to help students understand what research is and pathways into research. Because there are no prerequisites, any student in the department can take the course.
Other barriers that students with disabilities may face along the way:
Applications to research experiences or graduate programs can be dismissed due to low grades or a longer degree completion timeline. However, these can often reflect disability-related barriers during a particular term rather than a lack of ability, motivation, or potential.
Deaf students may miss informal conversations because they are unaware that they are occurring. Autistic students may struggle to interpret social cues or implicit expectations to take action towards relationship-building and networking.
Navigating rejection, setbacks, and negative feedback can present additional challenges for some students with disabilities, particularly in competitive academic and research environments.
Research or network settings that rely on spontaneity, informal interactions, and rapidly changing expectations may require accommodations to support students with a wide range of disabilities.
Blind and low-vision students, or other screen-reader users, may encounter barriers when coursework, research software, digital resources, or scholarly literature are not fully accessible.
Relocating for a short-term research opportunity, such as a summer program, may be difficult for students with disabilities depending on their healthcare needs, caretaking arrangements, accessible housing requirements, service animals, or reliance on established support networks.
It’s impossible to list every potential barrier; furthermore, while many students often face familiar barriers, as students begin to work more independently, learn new skills, and progress, they may encounter new challenges that require creative thinking to ensure access needs are met.
For potential mentors, it’s important to understand barriers from the social model of disability, which asserts that people are disabled by societal barriers—physical, attitudinal, and institutional—rather than by their disability. It shifts the focus from "fixing" an individual's impairment (medical model) to removing environmental and systemic obstacles that prevent full participation, placing the responsibility on society to create an inclusive environment.
As students learn which accommodations are most useful to them in a research setting, they may explore different arrangements and accommodations. These accommodations can also shift over time, as disabilities are dynamic and may impact individuals differently from day to day.
Disabled Students and Their Access Needs
The accommodations that disabled students most often use in undergraduate courses, things like extended time on tests, may not directly translate into accommodations that are useful in research settings. Students with disabilities might need to learn about their access needs in a research setting before they know which accommodations will help them succeed.
Disabled students are often unaware that they can request accommodations for research, whether they are doing research for credit or for pay. Consider ways to ensure students in your lab or department know how to request accommodations. When students do request accommodations, disability services offices may not be familiar with providing accommodations for a research setting, so you might find yourself negotiating with disability services and a disabled student to ensure their needs are met.
Most accommodations are free or low-cost. When there is a cost, the nature of the research (for credit, for pay, or volunteer) or the funding of the research may dictate who is responsible for the cost of accommodations. Research funded by the National Science Foundation may be eligible for a Facilitation Award for Scientists and Engineers with Disabilities (FASED) to alleviate barriers for disabled personnel, including students. More details are available in Chapter II of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide.
There are a variety of normal 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 (e.g., tasks that require vision or fine motor control).
Assistive technology or adaptive equipment.
Adjusted timelines.
A notetaker.
Accommodations that address working relationships within a team or lab may be helpful. Sometimes these might be negotiated directly between you and your student, but disability services can also help negotiate accommodations that might include the following:
Flexibility concerning working hours, meeting location (in-person vs. online), length, or frequency, and use of fidgets.
Written directions.
Meeting agendas provided in advance and notetaking during meetings.
A division of labor amongst teammates based on the accessibility of particular tasks.
Many of these accommodations could be offered to all students in your lab. Consider learning more about Universal Design of Learning (UDL) principles. Information about UDL is included in the resources below. Through UDL principles, many students benefit, not just students with disabilities.
Other times, students may be able to self-accommodate with their own strategies:
Noise-cancelling headphones to minimize distractions.
Visual timers.
Text-to-speech software used to give a presentation.
Organizational or notetaking tools.
Careful preparation for meetings.
Collaboration with peers on notetaking or other tasks.
Recording meetings or saving transcripts with advisors to refer back to (with permission)
As students learn which accommodations are most useful to them in a research setting, they may explore different arrangements and accommodations. These accommodations can also shift over time, as disabilities are dynamic and may impact individuals differently from day to day.
Accessibility and inclusion do not always need to be about compliance and procedure; they offer an opportunity to mitigate some of the barriers students with disabilities have faced in getting to where they are, as well as the roadblocks ahead.
Communication
Clear, consistent communication is essential for all students, and it is especially important with disabled students. Set expectations early and clearly to help students understand not only what it means to excel, but also what “good-enough” and “unacceptable” look like. Discuss expectations kindly and without judgment on students’ moral character. Approach students’ performance, whether trying to troubleshoot problems or reach new levels of excellence, as a collaboration between you and the student.
There are some topics that you might want to address with students:
Success criteria such as research milestones, timeline, and health and wellness goals.
Publication expectations, venues, and timelines, and how to report progress.
Preferred communication channels and expectations.
Meeting style and frequency.
Access needs, including document accessibility, possible accommodation requests, technology, and more.
How to surface and resolve conflict.
Use of shared agendas and action logs.
Over time, revisit these discussions to ensure everyone’s needs are being met.
Taking these accommodations and communication strategies into account will ensure that your lab has an inclusive culture. Many of the strategies listed in this guide are appropriate for all students to build trust, consistency, and empathy for other learning styles. Non-disabled students will be able to emulate this culture in their future labs and workplaces. Accessibility and inclusion do not always need to be about compliance and procedure; they offer an opportunity to mitigate some of the barriers students with disabilities have faced in getting to where they are, as well as the roadblocks ahead. Faculty want their students to succeed, and for disabled students, your willingness to foster an inclusive culture will help make that happen.
Be mindful that if a student has disclosed their disability to you, they may not want to share it more broadly... ask before sharing information about their disability.
A Note About Disability Disclosure
Decisions about disclosure of a disability are personal. There may be students with non-apparent disabilities in your research group. Some students might disclose their disability in their application materials for grad school or an REU. Some students might weave disability disclosure into their personal statement, especially when it aligns with their research goals. Others might share when they need help addressing access needs. Other students may choose not to share. Be mindful that if a student has disclosed their disability to you, they may not want to share it more broadly. In particular, if you are writing a reference letter for a student or speaking with colleagues, ask before including any information about their disability.
Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution - This documentary tells the story of teens with disabilities who attended Camp Jenned during the 1970’s and their continued activism as adults that made significant advances in disability rights.
Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong - This memoir by the late Alice Wong is a scrapbook of her life as a creator of media and leader for disability rights.
Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement - This documentary explores how technology is used to fix and upgrade human bodies, asking questions about what it means to be disabled or normal.
Bayer, S., & Serrato Marks, G. (Eds.). (2023). Uncharted: How scientists navigate their own health, research, and experiences of bias. Columbia University Press.
Jain, D., Potluri, V., & Sharif, A. (2020). Navigating graduate school with a disability. In Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’20) (pp. 1–11). Association for Computing Machinery.
Murtaza, T., Tamjeed, M., Tibdewal, V., Russell, M., McQuaid, M., Oh, T., & Shinohara, K. (2021). Understanding disability services toward improving graduate student support. In Proceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’21) (pp. 1–14). Association for Computing Machinery.
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:
