AccessSTEM

The Center for Emergent Materials at The Ohio State University works to recruit students with disabilities for their Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program through EntryPoint! and the Ohio STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) Ability Alliance (OSAA). In internships, students engage in experimental and theoretical research in physics and materials science. Part of their training is working with sophisticated lab equipment.

Students with disabilities should be allowed to bring their service animals into the lab, although they may choose not to. There are a variety of strategies that ensure that service animals can be safe in lab classes. Because service animals are well trained they tend not to pose a safety hazard to others.

To ensure a service animal and classmates are safe, you may want to consider the following issues.

Some students with learning and other types of disabilities may need additional time to complete assignments in lab courses. Described below are examples of how extra time could be provided to an individual student.

Features to make a biomedical lab accessible to people with disabilities could include

Design reviews are a common part of engineering education practice. In design reviews, students or student teams present their work to their classmates, instructors, and sometimes a panel of users or external experts for feedback and commentary. This practice gains formative feedback from multiple perspectives on a student’s project to ultimately strengthen both the project and the student’s communication and technical skills as engineers.

It is important for students, including those with disabilities, to communicate with their  advisors about their disability-related needs and accommodations. Several tools can help facilitate these conversations. They include mentoring contracts, annual evaluations, and individual development plans.

The Teach Access initiative pulls together leading technology companies, academic institutions and advocacy organizations—including AccessComputing and AccessEngineering—who are interested in increasing information about accessibility in computing education.

Background

There are a few programming languages have accessibility features built in. Examples are described below.

Individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing can benefit from personal devices such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. But these tools don’t totally resolve hearing issues. In addition, individuals who lip read may only understand 30% of what is spoken. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing may use sign language interpreters or real time captioners in class, but instructors can apply the following simple teaching techniques to make their teaching more accessible to students who are deaf or hard of hearing.