The Accessible Laboratory

Despite advances in technologies for accessibility and a doubling of the number of undergraduate students with disabilities in STEM since 2007, a large proportion of potential STEM practitioners with disabilities are disuaded from graduate study in scientific, mathmatical, and technical fields. In this workshop, we will consider barriers to making physical and digital lab spaces negotiable for people with disabilities, and contemplate the advantages of making STEM more accessible, not only for people with disabilities but for all practitioners . After engaging with case studies of STEM success by practitioners with disabilities, we will perform an analysis of the accessibility of our own lab contexts in a practical exercise.