Veterans Center

Captions make the content in video presentations accessible to individuals who are deaf. They also benefit many other video viewers. Beneficiaries include

Background

My name is Debra. I am a college student who is deaf. Over the summer, I participated in a Research Experience for Undergraduates summer program where I helped develop an open-source 3D-printed wrist orthosis for individuals who have had a spinal cord injury. I attended and presented the results of this research at a national conference focused on prosthetics and orthotics.

National Science Foundation grant proposals must include a description of the broader impacts of the proposed work. One consideration is how project activities will promote the full participation of people with disabilities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). There are many ways to include people with disabilities in your work and to otherwise address access issues for people with disabilities. This might include:

Capacity-building institutes (CBIs) bring together individuals from a variety of stakeholder groups to explore problems around a specific topic area and come up with potential solutions that increase the capacity of stakeholders to solve identified problems. The DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology) Center at the University of Washington in Seattle has hosted dozens of CBIs focused on increasing the success of individuals with disabilities in college and careers and improving the accessibility of information technology (IT).

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is a federal agency with the responsibility of ensuring equal access to education through the enforcement of civil rights. Several federal agencies have offices for civil rights attached to them, but the OCR in the Department of Education is specifically responsible for enforcing numerous federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance from the Department of Education.

The Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP), which is co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment and the US Department of Defense, is a recruitment and referral program for college students and recent college graduates with disabilities. Through the program, students are matched with summer internships or permanent jobs in the federal government. Since 1995, over seven thousand students or recent graduates have been placed in internships or jobs in a wide variety of fields and locations through the WRP.

The short 13-minute video Returning from Service: College and IT Careers for Veterans and the related publication provide an overview of some of the opportunities and challenges faced by veterans with disabilities as they transition to the postsecondary classroom and pursue degrees in computing and information technology fields.

Sensorimotor neural engineers study the properties of neural systems (e.g., the brain, spinal cord, nerves, ganglia, and parts of the receptor and effector organs), including sensory systems and motor systems, to identify how engineering techniques can be applied to them. For example, in recent years the field has shown that it's possible to control devices by using signals from the brain. Such advancements can improve products and technology commonly used by people with disabilities (e.g., prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs, augmentative communication devices).

The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA), defines "mitigating measures" as things that lessen or ameliorate the effects of an impairment, including, but not limited to:

Yes, the U.S. Department of Labor administers a program called the Recovery and Employment Assistance (REALifelines) Advisor. Developed by the U.S. Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS), the REALifelines Advisor provides valuable information and access to contact information for one-on-one employment assistance and online resources to assist wounded and injured transitioning service members and veterans in their reintegration into the civilian workforce."