Accessibility in the Laboratory

For some people with disabilities, their interest and skills are best applied to laboratory work. Science laboratories are environments where hazardous materials and processes are in use, and assessments are required to mitigate risk and ensure compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations. Accommodating individuals in a laboratory requires balancing adherence to those regulations, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) technical access standards. Individualized assessment and accommodation are needed to ensure that a qualified individual with a disability can work or study effectively in the laboratory while ensuring a safe working environment for all. This book is intended to be a helpful guide for professionals to understand how to provide equal access to people with disabilities in a laboratory environment. It will review the breadth of protections that are provided by the ADA. This book also covers the roles and responsibilities of persons involved in laboratory oversight, including institutional policies and their limitations with respect to providing appropriate support for individualized assessments in the laboratory.

Ellen Sweet is the Laboratory Ventilation Specialist in the department of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) at Cornell University. She has a Master's degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology in EHS Management and is a Certified Chemical Hygiene Officer. Ellen is responsible for the Laboratory Ventilation Management Program (LVMP) which is a comprehensive management system that balances health and safety with energy conservation strategies for research and teaching labs. She is also a member of the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Health and Safety (CHAS), a CHAS Executive Committee member, the chair of the CHAS Regulatory and Public Affairs committee, and a CHAS Fellow.

Wendy Strobel Gower is a project director at the Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability at Cornell University. She leads the Northeast ADA Center, the Diversity Partners Project, and fee for service work to educate managers and supervisors about including people with disabilities. Wendy holds a Master's degree in Rehabilitation Counseling from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She has worked extensively in the application and training of issues around employment and reasonable accommodation in the workplace for people with disabilities. She has gained valuable experience in project management and project direction over the past ten years. Other areas of interest include ensuring access to work, school, and community for people with disabilities, disability legislation and its impact on services, and the identification and accommodation of the functional limitations of disabilities across the lifespan.

Carl E. Heltzel is a freelance grant writer, author, and editor and a member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Committee on Chemists with Disabilities. He has a PhD in organic chemistry from Virginia Tech, and was a post doc at the University of Hawaii. He was the Monroe Moosnick Professor of Chemistry and a Bingham Fellow at Transylvania University. He also taught at Clemson University, the University of Hawaii, Manoa, the University of Kentucky, and Chaminade University. He is a consultant to Environmental Research, Inc., and has worked as a consultant for the Ohio EPA, the California EPA and Solid Waste Removal Board, various environmental law firms, the ACS, the Department of Homeland Security, McGraw-Hill, and the International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology. He served the ACS as co-author of two editions of Chemistry in Context, and as a past editor of ChemMatters magazine. In the Lexington, KY section of the ACS, he held all of the executive positions, including Councilor. He is currently a Regional Representative for the American Association of Chemistry Teachers.