AccessEngineering's Accessibility and Universal Design in Engineering Curriculum Capacity Building Proceedings Available Online

AccessEngineering's 2017 capacity building institute (CBI) proceedings are now available online. The event, entitled Accessibility and Universal Design in Engineering Curriculum, focused on how to make engineering courses more inclusive to all, including students with disabilities.

The CBI included efforts to make engineering more welcoming and accessible to students with disabilities and enhance engineering curricula with disability-related and universal design topics. Attendees included engineering students and professionals with disabilities, postsecondary faculty and administrators, disability experts, and professional organization representatives. The CBI provided a forum for discussing recruitment and access challenges, sharing expertise and successful practices, developing collaborations, creating resources, and identifying systemic change initiatives relevant to the meeting goals.

A highlight of the CBI included a workshop led by Dan Formosa, a design consultant who helped create OXO Good Grips kitchen tools, which have become a symbol of universal design. The PI and co-PI's of AccessEngineering also gathered various pre- and post-data from the event, leading to various information about participant experiences with disability and universal design.