Welcome!  AccessComputing is an NSF-funded Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance.  We work to increase the participation of people with disabilities in computing education and careers. We serve as a national resource related to disability and accessibility in computing. If you are a student with a disability studying computing, join the AccessComputing Team to participate in a mentoring community and become eligible for other opportunities.  Educators and employers can participate in one of our Communities of Practice.

For those of you who encourage other marginalized groups to pursue computing degrees and careers, do you need any assistance in making sure individuals in those groups who also have disabilities are adequately served by your project? We can help you do that. Check out our website AccessComputing to begin exploring relevant issues.

Welcome to our video "Mentoring Students with Disabilities in Research Experiences."  The three student highlighted in the video did 10 week summer research experiences run by the Computing Research Association's Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) program.   They each had individual faculty mentors and were part of their research groups for the summer.   In the video, they give advice about how mentors can be helpful to students with disabilities in their groups.  We hope you enjoy the video.

This is an inspiring project! I am so glad to see it, and the students are terrific spokespeople for the project and for students with disabilities. I have lifelong hearing loss, and know how underrepresented hard of hearing and deaf people are in professional careers. Seeing the deaf student presenter communicating so eloquently about her project and the advice she would give to mentors just about brought tears to my eyes.

It is good to see these talented students have opportunities to participate in these ways!

I love to see the students speaking for themselves about what they have learned.  The students appeared to have in-depth experiences and sharing meaningful suggestions for how to work with students with disabilities.  Can you share what they  learned and experienced in the Computing Research Association's Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU)?  What are some of your project impacts? 

Thank you for your presentation.  As a father of a child with autism, I often think about her future and wonder what supports will be available for her if and when she goes to college. Learning about programs like this gives me hope for her future.  Keep up the good work.

Yes, you have reasons to be hopeful. To an increasing degree disability is considered a diversity issue and, like for other marginalized groups, more programs are available to address the needs of students with disabilities and fully include them in mainstream opportunities.

Thank you for portraying this project through the voices of the participants and for us a taste of the STEM content they are working in. The links to the website, newsletter and other materials are helpful as well. It's great to hear the students' advice of others involved in or planning to work in this area. As the DREU program seems well established, have you also been doing research (or evaluation) on what is generalizable and/or scalable from your findings? 

As an co-presenter, educator and adult with a learning disability, thank you for this program. More students with disabilities should be in college taking STEM courses and graduating. My dissertation research focused on SWDs and higher education faculty training as many post-secondary students do not receive their appropriate accommodations. your program includes SWDs in computing!

Thanks for your support of our work!

This seems like a fantastic project - thanks for sharing.

I'm curious - how do you recruit students for your program?

Such meaningful work in bridging the gap for those who may not have felt STEM was for them. Do the participants get a badge or certificate of completion they can add to their CV, Resumes or profiles like LinkedIn that speaks to potential recruiters?

Students get $7,000 for a 10 week internship.  Like any internship it can be added to a resume.  The internship is research which is very relevant when applying to grad school.  DREU students are more likely to be successful in grad school than students who haven't done the DREU program.

This experience is definitely CV-worthy, along with other opportunities they can take part in as part of AccessComputing. We also provide participant with assistance/feedback in creating/updating their CVs and, if they take us up on the offer, we help them document such experiences.