Broadening Participation from Hearing Impaired Community at Tapia Computing Conference 2007

Association Computing Machinery, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal Summary: The Association for Computing Machinery proposes to bring a number of students with disabilities ? specifically hearing impairment ? to the 2007 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, there by increasing awareness of and participation by people with disabilities in the computing sciences. The Tapia Celebration is the perfect venue to broaden computing representation to include students with disabilities. The Tapia Conference, with its small size (relative to other professional computing conferences) and its focus on STEM students, would provide a welcoming and nurturing environment. Moreover, students with disabilities may well find similar or overlapping experiences with the under-represented ethnic students at Tapia. For instance, both groups have experiences being overlooked by traditional educational and professional pipelines. These conveyed similar experiences can become the basis of friendships and collaborations. These close student interactions would also seed or broaden student perspectives on future computing environments, needs, and innovation. Faculty from Gallaudet and from RIT has identified specific support needs for each student and those needs will be accommodated with the requested support