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Few students with disabilities transition from undergraduate to graduate programs. Graduate students often receive ineffective and insufficient accommodations, including lack of support specific to graduate students, because disability services policies are shaped by undergraduate experiences. To understand how disability services offices accommodate graduate students: we (1) critically analyzed disability services websites of 18 U.S. institutions, and (2) interviewed 17 disability services staff. Disability services websites publicly present institutional accommodation policies and guidelines, and staff are responsible for identifying, providing, and implementing reasonable accommodations. We found that policies may be interpreted differently depending on specific student circumstances. We discuss our findings in two main themes: (a) Policies and attitudes ascribed to disability, technology, and faculty, and (b) Impacts of policies and perspectives on accommodation decisions for graduate students. The contributions of this work include an empirical investigation of institutional support for disabled graduate students and suggestions for how to improve support from disability services offices to empower students.
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This content will become publicly available on July 14, 2026
Improving Access and Equity for Graduate Students with Disabilities: A Call to Action
Graduate computing programs are launchpads for innovative careers, yet a persistent access gap limits opportunities for graduate students with disabilities, particularly at the doctoral level. This paper therefore argues for targeted interventions to increase educational equity. We draw from the literature to outline key challenges and institutional barriers. We then propose prioritized actions for universities, which include crafting graduate-specific accommodation policies, enhancing assistive technology support, improving the accessibility of research materials and activities, and building disability-inclusive cultures. By building on existing disability support infrastructure-which currently focuses on undergraduates-institutions can broaden participation in graduate-level computing education.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2417014
- PAR ID:
- 10627643
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Research on Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT 2025)
- Date Published:
- ISSN:
- xxxx-xxxx
- ISBN:
- 979-8-4007-0626-4
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 204-209
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704637.3734729
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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