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Title: Access Differential and Inequitable Access: Inaccessibility for Doctoral Students in Computing
Increasingly, support for students with disabilities in post-secondary education has boosted enrollment and graduates rates. Yet, such successes are not translated to doctoral degrees. For example, in 2018, the National Science Foundation reported 3% of math and computer science doctorate recipients identified as having a visual limitation while 1.2% identified as having a hearing limitation. To better understand why few students with disabilities pursue PhDs in computing and related fields, we conducted an interview study with 19 current and former graduate students who identified as blind or low vision, or deaf or hard of hearing. We asked participants about challenges or barriers they encountered in graduate school. We asked about accommodations they received, or did not receive, and about different forms of support. We found that a wide range of inaccessibility issues in research, courses, and in managing accommodations impacted student progress. Contributions from this work include identifying two forms of access inequality that emerged: (1) access differential: the gap between the access that non/disabled students experience, and (2) inequitable access: the degree of inadequacy of existing accommodations to address inaccessibility.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1926209
PAR ID:
10267575
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '20)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 12
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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