 Text, women with disabilities in academic careers. Photos of three women. One wears a blue flight suit. One speaks at a podium. One holds a torso-sized humanoid robot. Women with disabilities in academic careers. Cheryl Burgstahler, University of Washington. I'm Cheryl Burgstahler, PI and Director of Access Advanced, a project hosted by the University of Washington where we are working to increase the participation and advancement of women with disabilities in academic STEM careers. Cecilia Aragon, University of Washington. My name is Cecilia Aragon. I'm a faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle. And I am a Latina and the first Latina full professor in the College of Engineering. A photo of Aragon holding a book she authored titled, Flying Free. My disability occurred after I had already been a professor. Shiri Azankat, Cornell Tech. My name is Shiri Azankat and I'm an associate professor at Cornell Tech. Having a disability has given me a unique perspective on problem solving. I've had to learn how to communicate my needs to other people in a way that is not intimidating. I have a visual impairment. It would really help me if you could do the following. Elaine Short, Tufts University. Photos of robots with arms and smiling lightfaces. My name is Elaine Short. I'm an assistant professor at Tufts University in the computer science department. I have a rare form of muscular dystrophy, an adult onset form of muscular dystrophy, which means I have a mobility impairment. For me right now, the big challenges are around travel and also just generally sort of physical inaccessibility of spaces. Do the automatic door openers work on all the buildings? Really being strategic around what travel I do, where I travel to and how I do travel so that I am involved in my community. One of the best places to network is at grant meetings because it's all faculty and it's often much easier to get to DC for a grant meeting than it is to travel internationally for a conference. Cheryl. The departments get started in welcoming women with disabilities. Shiri. Number one is just education and awareness and realizing that there might be faculty who have disabilities, who have specific needs. Cecilia. The department chair has to make a special effort to make assistant professors feel welcome, especially if they have an invisible disability. They often end up putting in hours of extra work just to be able to create the illusion that they are fully abled. If the disability services office is funded centrally and there is no cost to the department, then the department chair thinks, oh, I want my staff to be as productive as possible and there's no cost to me. Words appear. Explore practices that can make faculty careers more equitable for women with disabilities at uw.edu slash d-o-i-t slash programs slash advance. Access Advances funded by the National Science Foundation grant numbers HRD 2017017 and HRD 2017054. Any questions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the federal government. Copyright 2022. Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational non-commercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged.