AccessComputing 2025: A Year of Change, Renewal, and Recommitment
By Maya Cakmak, AccessComputing PI
It’s been an eventful year at AccessComputing—much like it has been for computing itself, and the nation at large. It has been a particularly challenging period for the Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) community, as several long-time partners have grappled with sudden and difficult grant terminations. Yet with every challenge comes an opportunity to reflect, adapt, and strengthen our commitments. Throughout it all, AccessComputing has continued to evolve while staying true to our long-standing mission.
NSF Alliance Renewal and a Redefined Scope
First, some good news: Our National Science Foundation (NSF CISE) Alliance funding has been renewed through 2026! Because of shifts at NSF, this renewal came with a revised scope, but it remains closely aligned with our original vision. As part of this transition, our Alliance has been renamed “Accessibility in the Computing Workforce” (AccessComputing Workforce) and is now focused on two core objectives:
- Expanding the Accessibility Workforce: Educate the next generation of computing innovators about accessibility, ensuring that all Americans can benefit from emerging technologies.
- Making Computing Accessible: Improve the accessibility of computing education, research, and career pathways so more Americans can enter the computing workforce well-prepared.
These goals reflect commitments shared by many of our partners, and we’re eager to continue collaborating to move them forward.
Navigating NSF Priority Changes
From the beginning, a foundational goal of AccessComputing has been to increase the representation of disabled people in computing education and careers. Through our work, we have learned that direct support for disabled students and faculty—across the entire career pipeline—is essential. Nearly two decades of NSF investment have significantly advanced this mission.
However, due to changes in priorities over the past year, NSF is no longer able to support activities that exclusively serve disabled individuals. As a result, some long-standing programs have shifted. For example, the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) supplements historically awarded to disabled undergraduate students regardless of research area, are now offered to students pursuing accessibility or computing-education research aligned with our project goals under AccessComputing Workforce.
Our AccessComputing Community Continues and Grows
These changes do not mean we are stepping away from our commitments to disabled students, faculty, and professionals. Quite the opposite:
- Our community remains at the heart of AccessComputing. We continue to gather, mentor, collaborate, and support one another, independent of any single funding stream.
- We are fortunate to have additional funding sources without the same restrictions, and we are redirecting them to sustain programs specifically focused on disabled students, such as AccessUR2PhD, which supports undergraduate researchers with disabilities.
- We are expanding our fundraising efforts to ensure the long-term sustainability of programs that remain essential to our mission.
New Opportunities Ahead
Despite the challenges, we are excited about what these changes enable. NSF’s willingness to let us focus more deeply on a subset of our goals, rather than reduce our funding, opens the door to more ambitious efforts, including bolder and larger scale accessibility curricula efforts, new initiatives to support teaching-focused faculty, and expanded research activities that advance accessibility in computing. We look forward to sharing more as these efforts take shape.
Just as importantly, these shifts have given us space to reflect on the tremendous impact of our community-focused programs—many of which NSF can no longer directly support—and to reaffirm our commitment to sustaining that work.
A Call to Our Community
We cannot do this alone. Disabled students and faculty need strong institutional and community-based support more than ever. We encourage you to continue uplifting disabled students at your own institutions through mentorship, research opportunities, inclusive teaching, and advocacy. As we grow efforts beyond our NSF Alliance, we also have new opportunities for partners to take on leadership roles within the broader AccessComputing community—roles that are not limited by the traditional structures of NSF-funded projects.
Thank you for being part of this community, for your resilience over the past year, and for your ongoing partnership as we chart the next chapter of AccessComputing together.
