Making the Field of Computing More Inclusive
From: Communications of the ACM
By: Jonathan Lazar, Elizabeth F. Churchill, Tovi Grossman, Gerrit van der
  Veer, Philippe Palanque, John "Scooter" Morris, Jennifer Mankoff

Despite the long-term focus on making technology accessible for people with
disabilities, the computing profession has not focused on making itself
inclusive of people with disabilities; such people remain highly
underrepresented at all levels and roles, including practitioner, researcher,
student, and teacher. Although the percentage of undergraduate students with
disabilities in technology-related majors is fairly representative of the
worldwide population as a whole, it is estimated that less than 1% of
students who earned PhD's in computer science (as of 2011) identify as
students with disabilities. People with disabilities bring diverse
perspectives to the design of technology. Like Cerf, the authors of this
article believe becoming more inclusive will be of great benefit to ACM and
to technology in general. It is thus important to examine the barriers that
exist and determine, as a professional organization, how we can overcome
them. This makes strategic and tactical sense; for a professional
organization that wants to increase membership, there are many potential
community members with disabilities who could join the community were it more
accessible.

Key Insights

People with disabilities are a potential source of ideas and additional
membership for professional computing organizations.

Including people with disabilities in the decision-making processes of
professiona computing organizations ensures the most important barriers are
addressed first.

Processes developed over the years are needed to make physical conferences
and their related digital content accessible to people with disabilities.

Read the entire article and view a video (5:33) at:
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/3/213827-making-the-field-of-computing-more-inclusive/fulltext

Links:
SIGCHI, the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction
http://www.sigchi.org

SIGACCESS
http://www.sigaccess.org

ACM's Commitment to Accessibility
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/3/213833-acms-commitment-to-accessibility/fulltext

ACM Web Accessibility Statement
http://www.acm.org/accessibility

Conference accessibility
http://www.sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sigaccess/resources/accessible-conference-guide