 Words appear. Disability and accessibility in engineering. What can educators do? Human ability varies greatly with respect to sight, hearing, learning, communication, attention, and mobility. The best engineers design products that are usable by a broad audience. Considering the needs of individuals with disabilities in design decisions can lead to better products. Nils Hockenson, biomedical engineering faculty. People with disabilities are problem solvers. And engineering is about solving problems and improving quality of life and designing environments and structures and devices to help people. And we're experts at that because we do it every day in our lives. Engaging people with disabilities in engineering fields can help to meet the demand for innovative engineers. To make this possible, engineering courses need to be welcoming and accessible to students with disabilities. And reasonable accommodations need to be provided. Grace, student, she signs. In school, I use an interpreter, a sign language interpreter. And I also have a note taker for each of my classes whenever I have a class. I was able to attend a machine shop class, working with a lathe and an end mill, you know, non-computer-controlled, hand-controlled. And largely because the faculty who taught that class were open-minded and really allowed me to dictate my limits. Engineering educators can make their courses more welcoming and accessible to students with disabilities by applying universal design strategies. Words appear. These strategies are incorporated in the course design and include setting clear expectations for assignments and tests, inviting all students to discuss their needs and accommodations with you, using multiple methods to present material, ensuring all members of a team engage in group work, using websites, documents, and technology that are accessible to people with disabilities. Engineering faculty can also teach accessibility and universal design in their courses. Cynthia, student. By including accessibility and universal design in engineering curriculum, you're making a statement to all the students that you're teaching that the perspectives and the needs of people with disabilities is something that they need to think about, whether they're engineering specifically for that group or for any other group. Words appear. Instructors can get started in incorporating these topics by including a panel of individuals with diverse abilities, helping students to address disability-related issues by practicing universal design in design projects, requiring that students adhere to accessibility guidelines. Kat Steele, mechanical engineering faculty. So just as we teach safety and material properties and dynamics within our engineering curriculum, incorporating universal design can ensure that our future engineers consider those small design tweaks and consider the breadth of the population and their design and future innovation. Words appear. To learn more about how you can fully include students with disabilities and incorporate universal design topics in your engineering courses, visit the Access Engineering website hosted by the University of Washington. www.edu-doit-programs-access-engineering. Access Engineering is supported by National Science Foundation grant number EEC-1444961. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this video are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Copyright 2017, University of Washington. Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational, non-commercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged. Described by Audio Eyes.