Posted by j.laird on 17 February 2021 - 2:00pm 

Photo by Andrea Enríquez Cousiño on Unsplash

We are delighted to announce the Panel on Diversity and Inclusion at Collaborations Workshop 2021 (CW21), which will focus on discussion around disability and accessibility in research software. Building a disability inclusive research culture makes it more inclusive for everyone.

The aim of the panel is to showcase experiences of people with different physical and mental impairments (such as vision impairment, mental health conditions, autism, and other physical disabilities) to raise awareness and highlight how we can make the research software community more accessible and disability inclusive. Everything we do should be proactively working towards a research culture inclusive of everyone, including implementing inclusive practices in the workplace and ensuring accessibility, access, and participation of disabled perspectives in our research or work.

The panel will be chaired by Dr Becca Wilson (UKRI Innovation Fellow, Institute of Population Health Science, University of Liverpool and SSI Fellow), who will be joined by:

• Phoenix C S Andrews (PhD Student, Information Studies, University of Sheffield and Freelance Writer)
• Dr Ella Gale (Research Associate and Machine Learning Subject Specialist, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol)
• Prof Robert Stevens (Professor and Head of Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester)
• Dr Robin Wilson (Freelance Data Scientist and SSI Fellow)

The panellists will answer questions around what changes would be revolutionary in addressing ableism in the sector, reactive versus proactive approaches to addressing ableism in academia, career progression, the differences in institutional responses towards students and staff, how COVID-19 has changed disability inclusion, and what individuals can do to build a more disability inclusive research culture. You can read more about our panellists here.

About Collaborations Workshop 2021

CW21 will take place from Tuesday 30 March to Thursday 1 April online and registration is open.

This year the CW21 keynote presentations and panel will be broadcasted live via the Institute’s YouTube channel and immediately made available for everyone, particularly those who are unable to participate in the full programme. You can sign up to receive a reminder and the links to the live streams closer to the event here. 

To find out more information, see the agenda and view the call for submissions, please visit the CW21 website.