‘It’s like having a second job’ Disability and academic careers

I have recently finished writing up the report for my EPSRC and HWU funded research exploring the experiences of disabled academics. Having been warned I would struggle to find 15 participants for my exploratory study, I was lucky enough to hear from over 60 academics. Parallel to this has been the enormous interest in the research on social media and more traditional media. I wanted to collate the various bits of publicity and interest that have been generated by the research. I haven’t yet begun a theoretical analysis of the data, but that is on its way. However, these pieces show the early findings. At the end of this piece, I am collating posts by other experts in the field. Just scroll down!

In February 2017 The Herald featured an OpEd from me and a commentary piece

I began by putting together a presentation and video of the early findings, with the latter, suggested at the National Disabled Staff Network Conference in Edinburgh.

Science Careers, the career development branch of Science were also interested and I was interviewed for a recent piece

The Times Higher has a week long series on #disabilityoncampus featuring first-hand accounts and a piece by me.

The Guardian published a piece on disability and inaccessible conferences

The research also informed this piece in the Herald on women academics

Hopefully, there will be more to come!

The full report can be seen here Disability Sang May 2017

Please do get in touch if you’d like to discuss the findings – I’d be delighted to present the work and discuss opportunities to implement the recommendations.

Managing gynaecological health in academia 

Recommended reading

Vivienne Dunstan wrote about her conference experiences in this fantastic blog post

Some hints and tips on organising accessible conferences

This twitter account is currently on hiatus, but is a helpful resource https://twitter.com/PhDisabled

Disability Go provides detailed information on disability access for venues, cities and a range of buildings https://www.disabledgo.com/

Chronically Academic https://chronicallyacademic.org/index.php/en/#

National Association of Disabled Staff Networks https://nadsn-uk.org/

ACCESS – guidance for US conference organisers http://www.sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sigaccess/resources/accessible-conference-guide/

And CDC guidance on accessible conferences https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/hearingloss/transcripts/Making-Meetings-Accessible.pdf

Example guidance from Bristol University on accessibility and conferences http://www.bristol.ac.uk/equalityanddiversity/act/protected/disability/conference.pdf