AccessComputing: Resources Available for Students with Disabilities

The following information was first published by AccessComputing.

Are you a student with disabilities looking for an internship?  Want to connect with peers and mentors with disabilities?  AccessComputing can help you do that. AccessComputing, a National Science Foundation-funded Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance, provides mentoring and funding for career development activities for students with disabilities in computing-related fields. This includes:

MENTORING: Through our online community, students and mentors discuss a variety of topics. It is a place to connect with others to share your successes, ask for suggestions regarding any issues that may arise for you related to your disability, education, or employment, and to support other team members when they need help brainstorming solutions.

TUTORS: Struggling with a computing course? Please contact us about tutor support. Each term, AccessComputing can fund a limited number of tutors for project participants.

CONFERENCES: Interested in attending a conference related to computing, diversity, or professional development?  AccessComputing may be able to provide funding for travel, registration, or accessibility-related costs.  While we can’t send every student to every event, we do fund many students each year to attend events like Grace Hopper, the Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, SIGCSE, and the Computing Research Association’s Widening Participation events, among others.

RESEARCH INTERNSHIPS: Every year AccessComputing funds students with disabilities to participate in the Computing Research Association’s Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates Program.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE?

At AccessComputing, we recognize that not all students with disabilities register with their campus disability/accessibility office and that they have a variety of reasons for not doing so. For that reason, we do not require our participants to be registered with their campus disability office or to provide medical documentation of a disability as a condition of eligibility. We do require a self-report from you, discussing your disability and the ways in which it creates barriers for you. All information provided on the application is confidential and is only ever reported to the National Science Foundation in an aggregate manner.

Find the application and more information online.