Making science careers more accessible to people with disabilities

Physics World Weekly Podcast

According to a recent white paper from the UK’s National Association of Disabled Staff Networks, 22% of working-age people in the UK have a disability compared to less than 7% of people working in science. At the upper echelons of science, only 4% of senior academic positions are filled with people with disabilities and just 1% of research grant applications to UK Research and Innovation are from researchers who disclose being disabled.

These disappointing statistics are reported in “Towards a fully inclusive environment for disabled people in STEMM” and this podcast features an interview with one of its authors – the physicist Francesca Doddato.

Based at Lancaster University, Doddato tells Physics World’s Michael Banks about the challenges facing scientists with disabilities – and calls for decision makers to engage with the issues and to remove barriers.