Overview of the proceedings of the 2019 Inclusion in Science, Learning a New Direction Conference on Disability (ISLAND)

Abstract

The 11th annual Inclusion in Science, learning a New Direction, Conference on Disability was hosted by Princeton Center for Complex Materials a National Science Foundation funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) and Princeton University on Saturday, September 19, 2020 in a virtual format due to the Covid19 pandemic. This annual conference included presentations that featured innovative research done by science teachers, science education researchers, access technology developers, and policy makers, other disability conference organizers, and others interested in the full inclusion of persons with disabilities into the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. Due to the virtual conference format, we were able to include closed captioning for all presentations. Princeton University is also known as an Aira Access point. Aira is a visual interpreter service to which blind and vision impaired (BVI) persons can subscribe, that assists them in their daily lives with navigation, and reading print materials in the home or in the community among numerous other purposes. The ISLAND conference, with the support of Princeton University, was able to offer the Aira service to any blind patron of the conference that requested it, to provide them with visual descriptions of PowerPoint slides that were being discussed by each speaker. According to Aira, the 2020 ISLAND conference was the first conference to attempt this innovative new accessibility addition.