Towards a fully inclusive environment for disabled people in STEMM: A NADSN White Paper

This White Paper aims to:

● Raise awareness of the inequity and discrimination experienced by disabled people in STEMM;

● Highlight the benefits of an inclusive STEMM environment that values disabled people and supports their career development;

● Provide short, medium, and long-term recommendations to address systemic ableism in STEMM; and

● Promote understanding and transformative change to improve the experiences of disabled people in STEMM including the sharing of good practice.

Our recommendations are that funders, learned societies, and higher education and research institutions work together to:

In the short-term:

1. Recognise the specific challenges and barriers for disabled researchers to enter, remain, and progress in STEMM.

2. Improve work-based training for managers and allies around disability, neurodivergence, chronic illness and intersectionality.

3. Build inclusivity into operational systems and structures, and provide clear, timely routes for requesting and receiving adjustments/accommodations.

4. Ring-fence and publicise specific funds for disability support.

5. Budget for and improve physical environments for disabled researchers.

6. Provide support for accessing research funding from pre-application to post-award.

In the medium-term:

7. Endorse an intersectional framework for disability and inclusion in higher education and research.

8. Require organisations to be held accountable to their working practice policies; with regular reviews to ensure they are accessible, inclusive, embed meaningful consultation, co-design, Equality Impact Assessments, and Equality/Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility (EDIA).

9. Establish Access to Work pathways for disabled researchers.

10. Reconceptualise the indicators for ‘good’ research, researchers, and environments.

11. Stop promoting and funding toxic research cultures.

12. Allow disabled academics to work part-time with no detriment to their pension or opportunities for progression.

In the long-term:

13. Create inclusive research cultures and ecosystems.

14. Recognise and reward work in research cultures and ecosystems.

15. Change equality law to recognise the impact of intersectional discrimination.