by Carolyn Bernhardt
While people with disabilities make up a significant portion of the population, science labs remain largely inaccessible.
People with disabilities make up 27% of the United States adult populace, making them the largest minority population in the United States. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that 16% of the global population is living with a disability. Due to an increase in noncommunicable diseases and people living longer, this number is on the rise. Yet, only about 9% of the scientific workforce, and less than 2% of NIH-funded researchers, report having a disability.
Clearly, much work remains to be done to include and support scientists with disabilities. Late last year, the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director endorsed new recommendations to improve disability inclusion in the workforce and in research studies.
There are many modifications you can make to ease the barriers standing between scientists with disabilities and making their next great discovery in the lab.
Consult your team to get started on a more accessible lab
Of course, the best way to start planning what further, specific accommodations to make is to work with your team. Do a “temperature check” on what their specific needs are for success in the lab. People with disabilities face ablism and access issues in their daily life outside of the lab, which research shows can impact their mental health. So, ensuring they are included and empowered in the lab goes a long way in their overall well-being.
Ask yourself and your team questions like:
- Does the team feel safe and empowered in asking for the accommodations they need?
- Does everyone on the team have equal opportunity for professional development, such as access to funding, grants, and mentors?
- What current accessibility needs do we have on our team?
- How can we make accommodations for existing members with disabilities?
- How can we modify the lab to make it more accessible before recruiting any scientists with disabilities?
You’ll also need to assess the space around your lab:
- Where is the nearest accessible restroom to your lab?
- Are there power-assisted doors into and out of your lab?
- How does your emergency evacuation plan anticipate getting researchers with disabilities out of the lab safely?
- Do you have easy-to-reach light switches, wall phones, and whiteboards?
Laying out the accessible lab
In the United States, there are 2 main executive and legislative mandates that apply to including and supporting scientists with disabilities in every lab. The Rehabilitation Act, Section 504 prohibits federal executive agencies and organizations that receive federal funding from discriminating against people with disabilities. Meanwhile, the Americans with Disabilities Act establishes a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability. It also mandates equal opportunity for people with disabilities to participate in and benefit from public and private programs and services.
If your lab follows American Disabilities Act regulations, you’ll have:
- Adjustable-height workstations
- ADA-compliant sinks
- ADA-compliant fixed cabinets
- Ramps
- Motion lights
No matter what disabilities are represented on your team, researchers need to be able to access frequently-used tools with ease. To help make this possible, you can:
- Place things nearby one another. For example, you can ensure your benches, fume hoods, and sinks are as close together as possible without causing congestion.
- Clear out the space beneath any sinks or important equipment to accommodate mobility devices, if needed.
- Set adequate aisle widths, bench widths, and surface heights. Ideally, all of your lab’s aisles are 42-48 inches wide, so mobility devices can fit within them and move around easily. And your bench seating width should be at least 36 inches. Adjustable benches and fume hoods are ideal, but you’ll need at least some that are 30 inches from the floor for anyone in your lab who uses a wheelchair.
- Add wheels to your cabinets. Being able to move cabinets and other large furniture pieces around easily can help make your lab customizable to whoever is working that
Accessible lab equipment and tools
Obviously, everyone is different. Many people have more than one disability, so have intersecting, unique, and layered needs. Nonetheless, here are some products and pieces of equipment that can help.
Make everything easier to see, and appeal to all senses.
You can start by creating high-contrast contexts to make visibility easier. This means ensuring there is plenty of contrast in all of your markings, labels, and signs. It also means making sure there is clear contrast between the wall paint color and floors, and that the door frame paint color stands out on the wall.
Having an open floor plan where your team can see each other can help scientists who are Deaf or hard of hearing read lips and take visual cues for easier communication – and it also opens traffic flow and communication for everyone else. Flashing or strobing lights can also help indicate when an alarm is going off to those who are hard-of-hearing. Of course, always make sure you can find an option that won’t negatively affect any photo-sensitive lab members.
You can also help improve visibility in your lab by using tactile cues wherever possible, such as syringes with notches that correspond to each measurement, textured shelf and cabinet fronts for easy identification, and textured surfaces to help indicate where the graduated cylinders, beakers, etc., are situated. Large print and braille are also great for labels and signage. The CanDoAble braille mark labels are a great , and they’re reusable.
Finally, you can ensure your figures and research posters are usable by the 8-10% of the population who are color-blind with online color blindness simulators. Some lab tools like the VisionMate HSX High Speed Barcode Reader, which provides visual feedback for storage tube scanning, are also designed with color vision accessibility in mind – allowing personalization of the LED alert colors.
Make lab equipment as hands-free as possible.
For scientists working around vision deficiencies, arthritis pain, or fine motor control challenges, complex, hands-on workflows and tiny details can pose logistical difficulty. More labs than ever are embracing hands-free and automated solutions with next-gen features like cloud connection, voice control, and others that are useful for everyone, but particularly for researchers with disabilities.
For example, the Invitrogen E-Gel Power Snap Plus Electrophoresis System cuts out most of the traditional gel handling and liquid components of nucleic acid analysis, while EVOS microscopes skip the eyepiece lenses and instead display automated imaging results on a large monitor display. And the QuantStudio RT-PCR Systems were some of the first instruments to feature voice command control along with remote set-up, monitoring, and sharing.
Make everything easier to reach and grab.
Whenever possible, use things like beakers, graduated cylinders, etc., with handles, table-top turntable or revolving trays, pull chords, C-clamps, blade-type drawer handles instead of knobs, and extended eyepieces for microscopes. The AccessScope is a great example of an accessible, easy-to-reach tool.
Take advantage of accessible software tools.
For the visually impaired, ensure you offer software system options that can scan a microscope slide and make it easier to see, screen-read, dictate aloud, and offer talk-to-text options.
Some good examples include:
- The Sci-Voice TM Talking LabQuest 2 — a talking data collection tool made durable enough for both field use and bench research
- The Sci-Voice TM Talking Logger Pro Package For JAWS — a quantifiable data collection software solution that uses text-to-speech screen reader capabilities.
- LabTwin — an AI-based voice-powered digital lab assistant that uses talk-to-text technology to help scientists access data, look up information, coordinate experiments, take notes, and record results in real-time.
And whenever possible, you’ll also want to use software that shows captions for your hearing-impaired colleagues.
Resources and further reading on accessible labs
Read more
- Get a primer on disability and being an ally with Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladau
- Disabled scientists excluded from the lab — Chemistry World
- Community voices: broadening participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine among persons with disabilities — Nature Communications
- Making science more accessible to people with disabilities — Binghamton News
- A report and recommendations from the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director Working Group on Diversity’s Disability Subgroup
- A report and recommendations from the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director Working Group on Diversity’s Subgroup on Individuals with Disabilities
- Learn more about the ADA Accessibility Standards
- Learn more about the ADA Standards for Accessible Design
Helpful resources
A lab to learn from
The Accessible Biomedical Immersion Lab (ABIL) at Purdue University was designed and built to be fully accessible. The ABIL also offers a 3-D computer simulation to enable remote visitation to the lab. You can also take a virtual tour (with narration) here.
The ABIL is a part of the Institute for Accessible Science.
Resources for science education
The Perkins School curates accessible science learning approaches and products for science educators. They also offer teaching tips and resources.
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References
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“LabTwin | The Leading Voice Powered Digital Lab Assistant.” n.d. Accessed February 27, 2023. https://www.labtwin.com.
Lindsay, Sally, and Kristina Fuentes. 2022. “It Is Time to Address Ableism in Academia: A Systematic Review of the Experiences and Impact of Ableism among Faculty and Staff.” Disabilities 2 (2): 178–203. https://doi.org/10.3390/disabilities2020014.
Mattison, Siobhán M., Logan Gin, Allistair A. Abraham, Megan Moodie, Feranmi Okanlami, and Katherine Wander. 2022. “Community Voices: Broadening Participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine among Persons with Disabilities.” Nature Communications 13 (1): 7208. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34711-w.
Micale, Jennifer. n.d. “Making Science More Accessible to People with Disabilities – Binghamton News.” News – Binghamton University. Accessed February 27, 2023. https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/4005/eye-on-inclusion-making-science-more-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities.
“Stemedhub – Group: IAShub ~ Accessible Biomedical Immersion Laboratory (ABIL).” n.d. Accessed February 27, 2023. https://stemedhub.org/groups/iashub/abil.
Sukhai, Mahadeo A, Chelsea E Mohler, Tina Doyle, Erica Carson, Christine Nieder, Daniella Levy-Pinto, Emily Duffett, and Frank Smith. n.d. “Creating an Accessible Science Laboratory Environment for Students with Disabilities.”
“U.S. Access Board – ADA Accessibility Standards (Enhanced Single File Version).” n.d. Accessed February 27, 2023. https://www.access-board.gov/ada/.
“Virtual Environment Makes Purdue’s Real-Life Accessible Biology Wet Lab Available Worldwide.” n.d. Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering – Purdue University. Accessed February 27, 2023. https://engineering.purdue.edu/BME/AboutUs/News/2013/virtual-environment-.
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