How scientists with disabilities are making research labs and fieldwork more accessible

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (news agencies) — The path to Lost Lake was steep and unpaved, lined with sharp rocks and holes.

A group of scientists and students gingerly made their way, using canes or a helping hand to guide them. For those who couldn’t make the trek, a drone brought the lake — blue and narrow — into view.

The field trip was designed to illustrate the challenges disabled researchers often face and how barriers can be overcome.

“Just because you can’t do it like someone else doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” said Anita Marshall, a University of Florida geologist leading the outing. The group included scientists with sight, hearing and mobility disabilities.

Marshall’s organization ran the field trip to the lake along the San Andreas Fault, outside of San Bernadino. Her group — the International Association for Geoscience Diversity — and others are working to improve access to field and lab work so that those with disabilities feel welcome and stay.

Taormina Lepore, a Western Michigan University paleontologist who went on the trip, said scientists tend to value a single, traditional way of getting things done.

At Lost Lake, everyone got a view — even if they couldn’t physically get there.

“It’s really about empathy, as much as it is about science,” said Lepore, who also researches science education.

Disabled people make up about 3% of the science, technology, engineering and math workforce, according to 2021 data from the National Science Foundation.

Scientists with disabilities say that’s in part because labs, classrooms and field sites aren’t designed to accommodate them. Students and faculty are still told that they can’t work in a lab or do research safely, said Mark Leddy, who formerly managed disability-related grants for the National Science Foundation.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, sets minimum regulations for new buildings and labs, including ramps and wheelchair-accessible walkways.

But modifying older labs can be a complicated and lengthy process.

Alyssa Paparella is working on her doctorate in biology at Baylor College of Medicine and founded an online community for disabled scientists. She said a science building at one of her former schools had no automatic buttons to open doors.

“What is that saying about who you want actually working in the laboratories?” she said. “That’s the front door that they’re not even able to get in.”

Leddy said researchers with disabilities are invaluable because of their life experiences. They have to constantly come up with creative ways to get past barriers in their lives — a problem-solving skill that’s indispensable in a lab.

“If they don’t feel welcome, if they don’t get access, then how can they contribute that talent?” Leddy said.

Venu Varanasi, a biomaterials engineer at the University of Texas at Arlington who has low vision, prints out signage using high-contrast color combinations and encourages his students to keep floors and counters clutter-free so he can navigate the lab more easily.

He said those modifications also keep accidents to a minimum for non-disabled students.

“When you realize that you have a person with a disability, you have an opportunity, not a problem,” he said.

At Purdue University in Indiana, engineering professor Brad Duerstock helped design an accessible biomedical lab years ago with support from the school and a National Institutes of Health grant, removing cabinets under sinks and fume hoods so that wheelchairs can easily pull up.