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Despite the interest in equity, little research has considered students with disabilities in PreK-12 computer science education. The 2022 Computer Science Teachers Association and Kapor Center facilitated Landscape Survey of PreK-12 CS Teachers, which had over 2200 responses, gives us new insight. There were few significant differences between the experiences and perceptions of teachers with disabilities and those without. Accessibility was the least taught computing concept. Furthermore, teachers reported on a variety of barriers that students with disabilities encounter related to structural barriers, students choosing note to take CS, and teachers' perceptions of student ability. The findings point to the need for interventions related to resources, outreach, and policy. 

Along with the growing number of students with disabilities in higher education comes an opportunity to explore the difficulties they experience, especially in the post-pandemic era, as well as how to better support them, thus making post-secondary education more inclusive. A considerable amount of research has been done in providing accommodation for students with physical disabilities, but other hindrances to accessibility such as mental health conditions are prone to be overlooked, perhaps in part due to the stigmatization and subjective invisibility of this topic, specifically in rigorous, competitive fields such as Computer Science (CS). In order to bridge this gap, we conducted a nationwide survey in which 53 undergraduate CS students who identify as living with a mental health condition shared their experiences in their CS courses, instructor and TA office hours, interactions with other students, and the rest of the field. This paper summarizes the most common negative and positive experiences, as well as respondents' recommendations for CS instructors, including recognizing these students' struggles, making themselves approachable, and providing flexible formats of lectures and office hours. The results of this study provide a glimpse of the academic lives of CS students living with mental health conditions, so that CS instructors could foster a more inclusive environment by supporting more students in their paths of pursuing higher education. 

The introduction of block-based programming has gradually changed the landscape of programming education, particularly for school children. Block languages today, however, have serious technical barriers to students with disabilities. For example, block languages are generally not screen reader accessible, incompatible with braille, and contain serious problems for users with motor impairments. No student with a disability should ever be denied access to learning computer science and they do not have to be. To help rectify this, we present a new approach to the design of block languages called Quorum Blocks. Quorum Blocks uses a custom hardware accelerated graphical rendering pipeline that takes into account how screen readers and other devices work under the hood. We discuss these technical details and demonstrate that accessibility support can be fully achieved without meaningfully losing either the look of modern blocks or their visual output. We present the results from focus groups that highlight the barriers students faced with a variety of disabilities when using the first version of Quorum Blocks. We focus especially on challenges with low vision users, screen reader users, or those using no mouse and only one hand to type. Block languages built using either our techniques, or on top of our libraries, would become accessible out of the box. 

Approximately 10% of computer science and engineering majors have a disability. Students with disabilities face a variety of challenges including those related to stigma around disability, inaccessible tools and instruction, disability disclosure, and a lack of mentors. This BOF will bring together individuals who are interested in increasing the representation of students with disabilities in computing and improving their success. Participants will share strategies to help each other do a better job of including these students in our classes and research projects. Resources related to accessible tools and instruction, universal design of learning, opportunities for students, and more will be shared.