Tips for Disabled Computing Students: Navigating Graduate School on the Path to a PhD
Graduate school may present a variety of barriers to students with disabilities. This might be physical barriers on campus, a lack of support, physical demands of travel to conferences, or the time-consuming nature of graduate school. Disability-related care, the unpredictability of symptoms, and the need to spend time and energy away from research in order to advocate for accommodations and inclusion can further complicate access.
Through a series of conversations with disabled graduate students pursuing computing-related PhDs, the AccessUR2PhD project explored strategies for navigating graduate school with a disability. The advice presented here is based on feedback from disabled graduate students in computing from universities across the US as well as input from recent research on students with disabilities and the writing of disabled people about their experiences in academia.
Key themes emerged regarding accommodations, advisor selection, communication strategies, and disability disclosure. Quotes featured come from the disabled graduate students themselves.
Accommodations
“It’s important to have both formal accommodations through disability services and informal adjustments from your advisor who understands you as a person.”
Securing useful accommodations as a graduate student can be a difficult process. The common accommodations used in higher education primarily fit the needs of undergraduates and may be less likely to meet the needs of students engaged in research and independent study. Regardless, it’s important to note that institutions are obligated to provide accommodations for research activities.
Graduate students who are research assistants or teaching assistants might need to work with two separate offices to secure formal accommodations: one that provides accommodations for students and one that provides accommodations for staff. Because it can be expensive to obtain documentation of a disability, it may be difficult to obtain formal accommodations. Additionally, access to medical documentation can depend on healthcare access. Some graduate students reported difficulty obtaining accommodations for research because their university determined that the cost must be covered by their advisor’s funding rather than a centralized budget.
Many students use a combination of formal accommodations obtained through these offices, informal accommodations negotiated with their advisor, and self-accommodation.
Below are some examples of formal accommodations that might be requested by graduate students:
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
Unlike undergraduate programs, a core component of PhD programs is conducting research with faculty members. Accommodations that address your working relationship with labmates, faculty, and your shared workload may be helpful. Sometimes these might be negotiated directly with a faculty mentor, but disability services can also help advocate and negotiate accommodations on your behalf. Faculty are often eager to support students’ success and are willing to devise a plan that works for everyone. Common accommodations included below:
Flexibility with regard to 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
Other times, graduate students may be able to self-accommodate, using tools and strategies such as these:
Noise canceling 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)
Requesting accommodations for high-stakes exams—such as qualifying or general exams—may require careful negotiation with the disability services office and academic department to ensure that everyone agrees on the nature of the accommodations. This may also require advocacy with the faculty administering exams to help ensure any accommodations are implemented as intended.
A flexible environment, where an advisor allows their students greater input in work, project, and technology management, can often prove to be more welcoming to a wider group of people, not just people with disabilities.
Choosing Advisors
An advisor has multiple roles in the life of a graduate student: helping plan their academic path, navigating academic programs, research collaboration, and providing support as they enter the workforce. There are many factors to consider when choosing an advisor, including their style, expectations, and funding.
Learn about potential advisors by talking to their current students. Professors from your undergraduate institution may also be able to recommend advisors. Some students choose an advisor they’ve taken a class with or worked with on undergraduate or summer research projects.
There are many things a graduate student might consider when choosing an advisor. Great matches may include faculty who value teaching and computer science education, publish on mentoring and pedagogy, or openly discuss health and inclusion. There are multiple facets to consider:
Advisors’ styles can differ with regards to workload, communication norms, and work/life balance.
Disabled faculty or those who work in accessibility may be especially attuned to the access needs of their students.
Assess the lab climate carefully. Ask about community practices, lab meetings, documentation norms, and how conflicts are handled.
"It is really difficult when you're having advisor challenges, and co-advisement brings its own new set of challenges. You have to manage four relationships. You have one with each, and then them together, and then all three of you. So it can make things complicated, but on the other set hand, it can help you. Sometimes one can be really helpful to work with the other person.”
Some graduate students will be co-advised by two advisors, which can bring both advantages and challenges. Having co-advisors allows graduate students to gain perspective and mentoring from two different research backgrounds. This can be particularly helpful if their intended field of study spans two specialties or requires a very specific scope of interest. A second advisor can also help a graduate student navigate differing perspectives held by the first advisor and the student. Yet, a student who is co-advised may also find themselves navigating differing communication preferences or different research priorities, difficulty scheduling meetings, or the added burden of serving as a messenger between the two advisors.
The terms advisor and mentor are often used interchangeably. A mentor is someone who provides guidance, support, and advice focusing on the student’s needs. Although an advisor may serve as a mentor, they may not.
Building Relationships
Building relationships with other researchers, including faculty, postdocs, and graduate students at your institution and beyond, will lead to a larger support network while navigating graduate school, research, and careers. Students should consider joining groups and communities related to their area of study or identity. Many campuses have disability groups and computing collectives where a graduate student can connect with others, or they may form their own association. Beyond a student’s institution, some organizations provide opportunities for community. This might include professional associations, working groups or organizing committees for conferences, or mentoring programs.
Communication
Clear and consistent communication with your advisor(s) about goals and priorities can mean a smoother path to graduation. Students should consider talking with their advisor about these topics:
Success criteria such as research milestones, and 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 documents, technology, physical spacesw, and more
Possible accommodations
How to surface and resolve conflict.
Use of shared agendas and action logs.
Over time, students can revisit these topics to ensure everyone’s needs are being met.
Disability Disclosure
“When I first joined, my mentor asked me a bunch of questions about how often I wanted to meet, if I had any ideas about what the lab in general should look like. He was very receptive to trying to make the lab how we all wanted it. In terms of the disability stuff, it's definitely useful to have that kind of discussion at the beginning.”
In any setting, how and when to share information about a disability is a personal decision. Many consider disability disclosure to be an ongoing process rather than a one-time conversation. Some students may choose to disclose information about their disability or just about their access needs. They may want to share disability information with their advisor, labmates, both, or neither. Even if a student initially chooses not to disclose their disability, they may revisit this decision. Because disabilities and needs are often dynamic, it may be necessary to revisit disclosure to adjust accommodations or workflows as needs change. Some people wait to disclose, or never disclose, due to concerns about discrimination and stigma.
In some settings, particularly in student-centered labs, disclosure might feel safer. Practicing self-advocacy will help develop skills that will be useful as a graduate student and beyond:
Focusing on specific access needs. Share examples of how accommodations are directly tied to equal access and desired outcomes.
Preparing an access needs statement that includes concrete requests that lead to success (flexible check-ins, extended time on certain tasks, asynchronous feedback). Practice articulating access needs with trusted friends.
Aligning work with strengths. Propose deliverables that leverage strengths while being prepared to offer alternatives if challenges arise.
Remember advisors may have access needs too. A student should model the behaviors they would like to see and coordinate mutually.
Normalize flexibility by framing adjustments as supporting productivity and project outcomes.
PhD as a Journey
The pursuit of a PhD in computing can be viewed as a unique, dynamic journey. It’s important to find a routine, choose an advisor whose style fits (e.g., hands-on vs. hands-off), and adjust your pace as health, life, or projects evolve.
Treat the PhD experience as a marathon that will look different for every student. Stress points can include uncertainty, long timelines, and isolation. Consider organizational strategies and time management such as deliberately scheduling hobbies and pacing to avoid burnout. It’s okay to calibrate workloads and capacity in order to maintain accountability with collaborators.
Additional Resources
AccessComputing, University of Washington. (n.d.). Advising neurodivergent PhD students. https://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/advising-neurodivergent-phd-students
Bayer, S., & Serrato Marks, G. (Eds.). (2023). Uncharted: How scientists navigate their own health, research, and experiences of bias. Columbia University Press.
Esch, J., & Blaser, B. (2025). Improving access and equity for graduate students with disabilities: A call to action. In Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Research on Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT ’25) (pp. 204–209). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3704637.3734729
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. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3416986
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. https://doi.org/10.1145/3441852.3471231
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 underrepresented 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 staff of AccessComputing. Conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of funders.
