About the CBI

Building Capacity to Increase the Participation of People with Disabilities in Engineering, sponsored by AccessEngineering, was held in Seattle, WA on April 7–10, 2015. Its purpose was to encourage efforts to make engineering more welcoming and accessible to students with disabilities and enhance engineering curricula with disabilities-related topics. Attendees included engineering students and professionals with disabilities, postsecondary faculty and administrators, disability experts, and professional organization representatives. 

As is typical of a CBI

• All participants contributed to its success.
• Speakers participated in group discussions.
• Experts in all topic areas were in the audience.
• Participants gave presentations and participated in large and small group discussions.
• Some predetermined professional development was presented, new content was delivered as the meeting unfolded, and participant interests were expressed and expertise was made known.

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’s goals.

Topics discussed include

• universal design of instruction and academic accommodations;
• the experiences of engineering students and professionals with disabilities;
• outreach activities designed to recruit students with disabilities into engineering;
• best practices for making courses welcoming and accessible to students with disabilities; and
• disability, accessibility, and universal design topics for engineering curricula.

The agenda for the CBI and summaries of the presentations, panels, and working group discussions are provided on the following pages.