Hello, and welcome to the Physics World weekly
podcast.
In this episode, we look at how careers
in science
can be made more
accessible
to people with disabilities.
Our guest is Francesca
DiDato,
who is co author of a white paper
called towards a fully
inclusive
environment
for Disabled People in STEM,
which was published earlier this year by The
UK's
National Association
of Disabled Staff Networks.
A physicist at Lancaster University,
Francesca is in conversation
with Physics World's Michael Banks.
Oh, hi, Frankie. Hi. It's great that you
could join us today on the podcast and
great to have you to talk about this
new important report from The UK's National Association
of Disabled Staff Networks.
So entitled Towards a Fully Inclusive Environment for
Disabled People in STEM,
the report examines the many issues facing disabled
people in science.
Written by the association STEM Action Group,
which consists of people from across The UK
and and across different disciplines,
the report offers solutions to those issues while
at the same time raising awareness of the
inequity
and discrimination
experienced by disabled people in science.
So, Frankie, one thing I was really struck
by when looking through the report
was that while twenty two percent of working
age adults in The UK are disabled,
less than seven percent in science have a
disability.
So what do you think lies behind this
difference?
Okay. There are a number of different factors
that are at play here.
There's firstly, the issues around disclosure, whether someone
feels safe to disclose that they are disabled
or not, especially in the climate that we're
in where there's a lot of negativity
coming out of politics, out of the media,
around people's perceptions, there's society's
perceptions of disabled people,
and there's also
the environment within academia itself and people being
afraid
of going, hey, what if I lose my
job if, I disclose I'm disabled, which is
very much the case in quite a lot
of cases.
There's also the matter of whether someone identifies
as disabled or not.
Like, someone,
might have what's
legally,
disability,
but they might not see themselves as being
disabled.
There's also the issues around
discrimination,
the societal
climate that we're in, as I was alluding
to earlier,
with the way that people are perceived,
if they disclose that they are disabled. And
for that, I include,
people who are neurodivergent
and people who have chronic long term health
conditions.
The,
there's matters around discrimination
and,
about that, which also again ties into the
societal attitudes.
There's also the physical digital barriers, whether the
environment
is accessible or not.
Can you get the support that you need
in order to be able to do your
job?
And there's also
the matter of funding issues
and
whether you can get funded. And unfortunately it's
very often the case
that disabled people ended
up being
stuck in lower grade roles and struggle to
progress through their careers. And one of the
things that we've identified is that where it's
around the 7% mark for early
career researchers
and academics,
that
percentage decreases the more senior
that you look. So within sort of like
higher,
management,
senior roles,
senior academics,
that figure drops to more like 4.5%.
Wow. It's really stark, isn't it? Mhmm. And
and in the report, it also outlines, you
know, you touched you've touched on them,
in the previous answer a little bit, but
it outlines the many barriers that are faced
by disabled people in science. You know, these
are social,
physical, digital, and and financial.
And maybe we can go through through these
one by one. So what what about some
of the kind of physical barriers and what
what what are some instances there?
Okay. That can be the building access. So
is a laboratory space
accessible?
Can you get into the building even? Such
as, is there
a ramp access that's suitable?
Even sort of like the inclination
of the
ramp can
cause
a building
to be completely inaccessible for, say, someone with
reduced mobility or someone in a wheelchair?
Are there
handrails?
What's the surface made of?
Are there accessible
doors?
Can you press a button to get you
entry even into the building? And when you're
dealing with a lot of very heavy
fire doors,
those can be a massive barrier
where even if someone is walking but has
reduced say muscle strength,
they will say be reliant on someone else
to open the door for them. And so
even getting into the room can be an
issue. And that's for laboratory spaces, teaching spaces,
the works.
There's also issues within offices.
Are there sensory issues going on such as,
physical
issues with the desk heights,
the surfaces that,
textures of the fabrics that,
chairs are.
What about lighting conditions? Are those suitable?
If someone,
is say sensitive to light,
for whatever reason, be it an allergy
or is prone to migraines or they need
good light levels, say for example, if they
have reduced,
vision,
they might need better lighting. So is that
suitable? That can be a barrier. What about
adjustable
desks? Are the desks too high for someone
who's, say, in a chair or someone who's
shorter in stature?
Can
they even sit at the desk?
Are the shelves too high? Or say fume
cupboards? There are a huge amount
of range of what
physical barriers there are in place.
Mhmm. And I guess some some of these,
you know, during the construction of a building
itself, for example, in a bit of that,
that these
these types of barriers are removed at that
point when, you know, during the planning process,
for example, I guess it's much more difficult
to implement these later on, you know, when
when a building is already existing, for example.
So I guess that those kind of considerations
need to be taken in, you know, as
soon as as soon as possible, I guess.
Absolutely. It really is so much easier and
more cost effective as well, which a lot
of places don't consider and being a part
of the
equation really,
is thinking about inclusion,
from the get go, which it really should
be. And
it's really startling just how many places,
even in this day and age,
will leave the accessibility
part
until being an afterthought if they think about
it at all. There are even instances where
I've encountered lecture theaters that are brand new
multimillion pound,
facilities that have been built,
where even things like, the lecture theaters are
so steep,
where the steps are
really high and really narrow. They're sort of
designed with tall men in mind. So even
if you don't have a disability of any
kind,
but say you are a more petite woman,
you might struggle
and you don't feel safe because there's no
handrails except for grabbing onto the desks.
And there might not be necessarily enough space
for someone who's in a chair to come
and sit or looking at things like the
fire escapes.
Are those accessible for someone with impaired mobility?
Like, it's no good having a fire escape
that's up steps.
And how about the digital barriers? So what
are some kind of examples there?
Oh, there's loads.
Is there sufficient software?
The
for example,
is the documents
screen reader,
accessible? Like, can they be read properly?
Looking at the fonts used, looking at the
colors,
for the fonts.
You want to make sure that the gold
standard is being
followed with select ideally
font size 12 to 14.
Font size 14 is the absolute gold standard
is the best that you can go for
as a base level. And yet normally people
will go for really small print and they
will use low grade paper when printing documents.
Looking at the contrast to the colors. And
unfortunately,
one thing that is,
really good highlighting of that sometimes you will
have,
people's needs will clash with other people's needs
Is looking at,
somehow some people might need low contrast,
not too many colors on the page,
such as in the cases of, some autistic
people might find that it's much easier for
them,
and be
less prone to sensory overload is if they've
got a very soft color palette going on
where there isn't too much high contrast and
lots of pops of color. Whereas say someone
who is ADHD,
they might need lots of pops of color
to hold their attention.
So that again can be a digital barrier.
There are many different things. And one of
the things that's so useful, but again, you
still need to check it, is you can
get these fantastic toolkits,
that
let you adjust
the color scheme. So something say black and
white contrast
or inverted colors or increasing the font size.
Or
for example, many other ranges like that but
it's all along that sort of range.
But you need to check that with the
color schemes that you're using,
the fonts you've chosen,
do those work when you apply the different
filters? Because sometimes it can be very much
the case that once you apply something it
will still not be accessible. And I've even
encountered cases
where trying to apply these toolkits
filters
makes things actually even worse for accessibility.
Right. And these toolkit filters, they're something that
you can just kind of download or or
something like that? Yeah. There are lots of
different ones available.
Right. Okay. So how what about if we
move on to then some of the social
issues then? So I mean, so I guess,
you know, these are some of the kind
of more everyday
things that you that disabled people in science
may encounter.
Mhmm.
Oh, many.
There is a lot of discrimination
and bias against disabled people's
abilities.
We've perceived
as being
not very smart,
not capable,
not so productive.
There's a lot of discrimination and that's very
much wired into society.
So if you're looking at inclusion, you can't
just
look at it within the context of just
higher education alone or within STEM,
itself.
You have to look much further afield and
look at things on a more national scale,
looking at society wide barriers
and biases and prejudices
against disability.
And
so that is something that really needs to
change.
And unfortunately,
it ends up being the case that disabled
people in STEM are significantly
more
exposed to bullying and harassment.
The figures are really quite stark.
It's been identified that over sixty percent of
disabled people, including neurodivergent people,
are subjected to bullying compared to
about forty percent
of non disabled people and that's really quite
horrifying.
You also have issues within the department
of
poor training,
poor understanding
of what a disabled person's
challenges
that they're facing are,
or not really being aware of how a
disabled person might communicate differently if they're neurodivergent,
for example.
There are a lot of different
attitudes at play and that really does
need to change
desperately.
It's time for
attitudes
to become better and healthier because unfortunately,
things are untenable as they are.
Yeah. I mean, that's really a, you know,
really stark statistic that, you know, almost two
thirds
of, you know, disabled people in science are
bullied. I mean, that's, you know, that's really,
it's an incredibly high statistic there. Yeah.
And so what about I mean, not many
people might think in terms of, you know,
there are significant
financial barriers.
So maybe you could outline a little bit
about what what they may be.
Oh,
things such as being able to get,
funding.
Unfortunately,
because a lot of disabled people end up
stuck in lower grade,
roles,
it ends up being harder to progress and
it becomes harder to get funding as well.
And it's where you get
really stark statistics such as that only one
percent of applicants,
disclose being disabled.
When you look at UKRI's
data,
for applications
for grants. And it ends up being that
a lot of the line share of the
funding
goes to
specific groups
who tend to be in much higher already
established positions. And so disabled people get unfortunately
pushed out a lot
from that respect. There's also issues around having
time to apply for funding
when things can end up taking a lot
longer for a disabled person because managing their
health conditions,
struggling with the workloads that are already expected
of everyone
with little concession,
that things can take longer for someone who's
disabled, say, to to read something or whether
they might have to take rest breaks
because of their disabilities,
because they might have fatigue issues, for example.
The,
there's no
give really. And so if funding bodies can
give provision for
a longer time, and this would again would
be another case where changes for a disabled
person actually benefits
everyone really. So having more time for
being able to put a funding grant together,
being able to acknowledge the roles of, early
grades,
researchers,
and looking at how they can,
mitigate
the issues around being disabled,
is something that funding bodies could really do
a lot of, a lot more of. Or
looking at how,
support can be given to help,
someone
translate, say a three-dimensional
concept of some research,
into the correct format
for putting a proposal together,
as well as also ringfencing
funding
specifically
for
the extra cost
associated with being disabled.
So being able to have a support person
in place who can do certain tasks for
you that you might not necessarily be able
to do yourself.
But it's not
them doing your job for you. It's having
someone in place so that you can actually
then do your own work, do your own
science yourself. It's just having someone there to
support you as made.
Or having someone that can,
help with tasks like email replies
or the like. You can have a scribe.
And again, these are all things that aren't
just menial,
unskilled
jobs.
You need someone
who has a scientific background,
someone that understands the jargon, that understands the
skills and techniques, who has all of that
in place themselves already.
And so but, again, it's still someone who's
in the support role,
or having, the funding available
to be able to purchase specialist equipment.
And
it really is so very telling.
Like,
you
yeah. There isn't even,
wheelchair
accessible,
lab coats available.
They're not a standard thing.
And,
yeah, wouldn't it be better if lab coats
didn't just come in sort of like a
warm cut that's really very much designed for
men? You don't even have,
lab coats that are suitable for women's figures,
let alone people who are in a wheelchair
or has easy
access so that they can be put on
and taken off easily if someone's got reduced
mobility in their hands, for example.
And yet
we have PPE
that's
designed for service dogs to be able to
go into labs.
So surely they can design wheelchair accessible lab
coats.
And again, all of this
is
money that people go,
oh, but it's too expensive to fund,
disabled people's needs. It's too expensive. It's too
difficult to do. And yet surely, you get
return,
from that through being able to enable that
disabled person
to do their jobs because otherwise they can
get pushed out and you're going to lose
all that talent, all that knowledge.
And it really is
a shame
and a waste of that experience and knowledge,
really.
So
that needs to be changed as part of
the changes in attitudes
to funding,
disabled people's needs.
Yeah. And and you also, in the report,
it also,
recommends in terms of looking at these issues,
you know, series of recommendations,
looking at
a short, medium, and long term.
So I wonder whether you could just address
a little bit about what, you know, say
colleagues
everywhere on a day to day basis, you
know, what can they do,
to help?
Oh, there's loads of little things that can
make a huge amount of difference. Even just
asking,
how can we help,
is a huge thing. Letting a disabled person
say what their needs are
and letting them have their voice is really
bad at all. One thing that we desperately
need is more allies.
People that will speak up and
defend and back up a disabled person,
if they run into issues such as if
there's bullying and harassment,
or if there are problems in the workplace
with other colleagues.
Things like, can they provide colleagues provide
notes in advance?
But again, it will help a disabled person
and non disabled colleagues
just as well alike. And
there's that little shift.
Also looking at how,
workloads can be managed, changing perceptions about progress
through one's career,
looking at
the promotions criterias and mitigating,
for example, needing to take career breaks or
that something might take longer. For example, a
piece of marking
that someone might,
be able to do in, say,
two, three hours. It might take a disabled
person
four, five, six hours, double the time,
just to, like, give them that general idea.
But that, again, it varies,
because it's not one box fits all.
So having that leeway and give being able
to speak up and defend people when there
are issues.
So, yeah, it's part of that allyship and
changing that culture, changing that attitude
towards how disabled people and how disabled people's
career,
pathways
are affected.
That can be a huge
change. As part of that movement towards,
as we've laid out in the white paper,
the goal
of making
research culture and teaching culture for that matter
much more inclusive and accessible for disabled people.
And all round, that would be healthier for
everyone because as things are,
STEM is pretty toxic.
Higher education is pretty toxic in terms of
the workloads
that are expected of us, the hours,
the life that's
expected of us that we're almost
just need to be perceived as being just
robots where we just work and just churn
out paper after paper after paper.
It's not healthy for anyone really.
So having these attitudes
benefits everyone really. And,
yeah.
And, and what about some of the
longer term goals and that's that's highlighted in
the report? I wonder if you could just
outline a few, a few, a few of
those.
Okay.
Whilst we're wanting to move towards things like
the improving of funding,
changing people's attitudes,
We've all it's all in the movement towards
trying to make things more inclusive as I
was just saying.
And that includes things such as,
endorsing
an intersectional,
framework
for disabilities,
as well as acknowledging
the compounded,
impact
of someone who is safe, ethnic,
racial, and minority group,
as well as being disabled or a woman
who's also disabled.
The barriers
and,
inequalities
faced from each group,
they're all cumulative.
So having a framework that is intersectional
as well as
disability inclusive
really is needed. And it's quite stark that
we don't have a framework that's out there
yet completely and utterly
like Athena, Swan or the Race Equality Charter.
There is work in progress towards,
establishing
the framework for disabled people,
but there is still work to be done.
So that's one movement. Looking at things such
as accountability
within organizations
and within,
funding bodies
for poor practice, looking
at
whether,
if someone is,
sort of like discriminating against a disabled person,
not bullying them, harassing
harassing
them, holding those people to account
and recognising
when
institutions
have got good policies in place and are
doing things
like removing some of those physical digital barriers
that I spoke about earlier
and trying to make things more inclusive
for the disabled staff members
because that's one of the things that's really
commonly found for disabled people
is that in higher education
across the board,
it tends to be that disability inclusion is
focused almost entirely on disabled students
and disabled staff get ignored
and swept under the carpet a lot. And
that's something that needs to change. Again, it's
part of the cultural societal changes
that, yeah, a disabled student,
can drop and then find themselves as nowhere
to go in STEM unless
things are changed with the attitudes and acknowledged
that, and it's not acknowledged that disabled people
are existing in STEM as professionals.
And so trying to get that framework in
place is really important. Holding people,
institutions
to account for when there's poor practice and
rewarding things when things are good,
improving
the support for access to work. And unfortunately,
it's the case
that just as disability benefits such as PIP,
which is
meant to be
for
supporting
that disabled people have a higher living cost,
that's being decimated as being much harder to
get with the criteria, which are already brutally
hard.
People think, oh, it's just easy to get
PIP. It really isn't. And it's incredibly
traumatizing
to go through
reassessment after reassessment
where you're not even treated as human,
and treated as a liar a lot of
the time. So access to work, which is
meant to be there to support disabled people
and help them stay in work,
that needs to be funded properly. And unfortunately,
assets to work, the funding for that's being
cut as well, which is going to, again,
run the risk
of disabled people being pushed out of work.
And it also doesn't really have a setup
that acknowledges that people
who are disabled can be working in high
skilled, high hourly rate
jobs, but they might not necessarily
be able to,
work full time.
And they can but they also need support
even though they're doing this high skill job.
But they need to have the support that's
in play, in place that's right for them,
for their needs.
So there's a lot of those different,
factors all at play here.
Yes. A lot of certainly a lot of
a lot of things.
So you you attended an event on the
March 31 that was at the University of
Strathclyde to launch the report. So what was
kind of the feeling there then at the
event?
Oh, it was so powerful. It was really
emotional.
There was so much fantastic discussion there.
And we got a lot out of it.
And it really is very much just the
start of our activities
of what we're planning to do.
And it's going to be something that people
need to check on, the Madison,
STEM Action Group,
web page because we're going to continually,
update that with more plans of what we're
wanting to do,
such as in between now and later in
the year when we've got another launch event
aimed at policymakers
down in London, which we'll be, hosting.
However, one of the things that was noticeable
at the event,
we needed more scientists
present.
A lot of the people present were already
those who care about EDI, who see the
value and importance to it. It was in
a way preaching to the choir, as it
were.
However,
we need more scientists listening
and taking action
and recognizing that disability inclusion
needs to be addressed.
So in a way, it was highlighting
part of the problem that we're facing.
People need to be,
taking account and taking action and getting involved
in this. It shouldn't just be on the
shoulders of EDI people,
and disabled people. Some of us are doing
this
work,
ourselves because of the barriers that we face,
and we're just trying to get our voices
heard.
So we need more scientists getting involved in
this.
So that brings me on to my final
question then, really, which is, you know, what
are your next steps
regarding this report? But also,
you know, what what impact do you hope
it will achieve?
We're wanting meaningful change because a lot of
people, they talk about,
doing this, taking that, doing that, doing another
consultation.
And it really is vital that consultation
of disabled people in STEM,
is done,
is not useful if the wrong group is
interviewed for ideas.
And it's just survey after survey after survey
that needs to change.
Action
actually is needed now because we've had enough
of surveys.
Change needs to happen. And this is part
of the paradigm shift that we're really needing
to take effect, really. We need to move
towards
having research culture
becoming much more accessible
and inclusive
for disabled people, which is why we've got
the recommendations
for getting policies in place,
making things more,
equitable as well as accessible, as well as
intersectional.
So we're just getting as much attention, as
much noise as we can, getting the attention
of policymakers,
people in senior positions in institutions,
in the funding bodies, in government,
getting them to listen and engage with this
because
unless
those people
are engaged,
it's going to continue having some of the
barriers,
that we face on the policy level, on
the strategies level, because these are the people
who make these decisions, make these choices, send
out these messages.
And
if we can have pressure coming from the
top down
to change,
it's much more likely that there will be
a shift. So it's absolutely vital that momentum
has kept up about this
and that we keep talking
about these barriers, talking about what
changes are needed and actually getting people to
do something about this.
Well, that's great. Thank you. Well, thanks for
your time to, come and explain all of
this to us. And it really does highlight,
you know, the many challenges,
that disabled people in science still have to
overcome.
But I guess also
how, you know, even a few steps taken
by all of us can hugely improve the
situation.
So many thanks again, for joining us on
the podcast today. You're very, very welcome.
That was Francesca DiDato
of Lancaster University
speaking to Physics World's Michael Banks.
Thanks to both of them for a fascinating
conversation.
I'll put a link to the white paper
into the notes for this podcast.
And I'm afraid that's all the time we
have for this week. Thanks to our producer,
Fred Isles.
We'll be back again soon. Bye.