This call for proposals is the result of a cross-university effort to increase awareness of, and research in, the intersection of race and disability.

To this end, CREATE, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, the Population Health Initiative, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, the Office of the ADA Coordinator, and the Race & Equity Initiative are working to bring together thought leaders in this intersection through quarterly learning opportunities and this call for funding.

Purpose | Eligibility | Deadlines/how to apply | Review process | Instructions

Purpose

The purpose of this call for funding is to address the gap in scholarly work at the intersection of race, technology and disability. Recent seminar series and books have interrogated the intersection of Race and Technology and Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory. In Fall 2021, CREATE hosted a seminar on the topic of Race, Disability and Technology, and in Spring 2022, CREATE hosted a panel on the topic during CREATE’s community day.

Our goal is to move that conversation forward by directly addressing the lack of research at this intersection. We envision projects that deeply engage with this intersection through a Disability Justice and/or DisCrit lens, exploring how race and disability together impact the experiences, outcomes, technology needs, and opportunities available to people of color with disabilities. Relevant topics include but are not limited to: 

Biased institutions

People with disabilities are over-represented in police encounters and in the criminal justice system, and technology plays a role in this. From biased algorithms to surveillance technologies used to track people before they are even convicted, there are racial and disability based inequities in the criminal justice system. How do race and disability interact in the criminal justice system? What novel systems and technologies can improve this?

Relevant readings:

Youth

Disability, combined with race, plays a troubling role in many aspects of the school experience. From the “school to prison pipeline” to impacts on higher education access, this intersection is critical to understand. How can educational technologies, and technology education, both broaden their remit to address these issues and their intersection?

Relevant readings:

AI & fairness

How do ableism and race interact to impact AI ableism and biases? In what contexts is AI applied where these concerns intersect? How can innovations in algorithms and data address emergent problems? For example, speech recognition and speech based device control can be problematic from both a race and a disability perspective, failing to recognize accents of all sorts, as well as dialects. 

Relevant readings:

Healthcare

How do both race and disability combine to impact healthcare, especially in relation to advances in AI and technology to support health? How can we change health technologies and experiences to address and prevent inequities? Digital disparities as well as access are both important to consider. Further, recent changes in access to services such as abortion combine with disability and race to put these intersecting populations at high risk.

Relevant readings:

Governmentality

How does racial bias and ableism impact algorithms used by the government for homeless service provision, policing, healthcare service provision, and other services? How does this affect disabled people in liminal spaces, such as the use of surveillance on migrants and asylum seekers? How does the risk of disclosing disability impact immigration status among people of color? What new algorithms and technologies can address these types of challenges?

Relevant readings:

Online access, ableism and racism

Online life is becoming an increasingly important aspect of everyday experience. Yet both ableism and racism are an ongoing challenge in online spaces. How do they intersect? From image and video descriptions to avatar representations to hate speech, what does it mean to reconsider this experience in ways that question who is included?

Relevant readings:

Eligibility

  • Full-time or part-time faculty with regular or fixed-term appointments are eligible to apply as PI or Co-PI, as are professional staff. All applicants must have PI status as determined by their dean. Applicants must hold an eligible rank that is active in Workday at the time of submission.
  • Those with acting, temporary, affiliate, visiting, or postdoctoral appointments are ineligible to apply as PI or Co-PI, but may be included in the budget for the project team. Affiliate or visiting faculty may not receive salary, but can be involved on the project team, just not as PI/Co-PI.
  • To qualify for a Tier II grant, the team must include stakeholder representation on the planning team (and ensure they are receiving appropriate compensation for their involvement in the project); and strongly encourage having faculty from two different disciplines relevant to the call. 
  • A PI or Co-PI may submit only one proposal per round.
  • This proposal may not be used as matching funds for another grant.
  • Support will not be provided merely to supplement or extend an ongoing funded research project.

Deadlines and how to apply

Types of proposals

We will be accepting two tiers of submissions:

Amount Description Quantity
Tier I-Spring 2023 Up to $15K Support pilot research and capacity building efforts to develop leadership of relevant people and organizations. 5 to 10
Tier II-Spring 2023 $35K For proposals with strong stakeholder representation, up to $15K additional funds are available to support partner organization. 0 to 2
Tier II-Fall 2024 $35K Awards available based on the readiness and quality of submittal. 0 to 3
  • Tier I proposals, of up to $15,000, can be used to support pilot research and capacity building efforts to develop leadership of relevant people/organizations. We plan to award 5 to 10 Tier I proposals in Spring 2023.
  • Tier II proposals, of $35,000, must have strong stakeholder representation. Up to $15,000 additional funds are available to support partner organization if the proposal is engaging with a stakeholder organization (for a total of $50,000 available for funding per proposal). We plan to award up to two Tier II proposals in  Spring 2023 and up to three in Fall 2024 based on the readiness and quality of what is submitted. 
  • Reporting on awarded proposals is expected. Reports of 1-2 pages will be due 12 months after the award and/or with the next proposal submission, whichever comes first. In the case of Tier II proposals reports should include information about the stakeholder engagement.

Spring 2023 round deadlines

  • Letters of Intent are due 5:00 p.m. March 17 for Tier II proposals only.
  • Full proposals are due 5:00 p.m. on May 1 for Tier I and invited Tier II proposals.

Submit your proposal by email

Awards will be announced by June 15.

Fall 2023 round deadlines: Tier II only

  • Letters of Intent are due 5:00 p.m. Friday, October 6.
  • If invited for a full proposal, these will be due 5:00 p.m. on November 15.

Submit your proposal by email

Awards will be announced by January 30.

Proposal review process

Proposals are reviewed by a committee that may solicit reviews from other UW faculty peers who provide comments and evaluate them based on explicit written criteria. Proposals that score highly may also be sent out to the community for review. Review criteria include:

  • The merit of the proposal in terms of research merit, potential for impact on people of color with disabilities, and value of the technology component
  • Likelihood of success of the proposal to further our understanding of disability, race and technology
  • Available opportunities and timeliness of the proposal for obtaining subsequent funding
  • Team membership: Does the proposal have a team with expertise in race, disability and technology? How strong and suitable are the qualifications of the project personnel? How strong are their records of success, especially in the case of more established researchers? Is the team interdisciplinary, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the topic?
  • Stakeholder representation (i.e. people of color with disabilities and/or organizations that represent or work with them): For Tier I proposals: How strong is the plan to connect with stakeholders and work with them to define a larger research agenda? For Tier II proposals: Is there substantive stakeholder organization involvement on the planning team and in the definition and execution of the proposed work, or equivalent involvement of stakeholders (as opposed to a convenience sample, survey, or other surface level engagement, or engagement that is not intersectional in nature)? Is the work synergistic with theoretical framings already being laid out by people of color with disabilities such as Disability Justice and DisCrit?
  • Feasibility/appropriateness of the project itself, its timeline, and its budget

Instructions 

Formatting

Proposals must follow the following standards:

  • Submitted as a single accessible PDF or Word file (you can download a Google doc as a Word file). See UW IT’s guidance on making documents accessible.
  • Set paper size to A4 or 8.5×11″ paper with .5” margins.
  • Use 11 pt. font, single-spaced. Smaller text in figures, graphs, diagrams and charts is acceptable as long as it is legible when the page is viewed at 100%.
  • A specific citation format is not required.

Tier I proposal requirements

Tier I proposals should be limited to 1 page (plus references, images and supplemental documents, as specified below, which are the same for both tiers). The goal of Tier I proposals, of up to $15,000, is to support pilot research and capacity building efforts with stakeholders organizations. The one-page proposal should include:

  1. Title of the proposed project
  2. Project team members (keep this brief; you’ll provide more details in your supplemental materials)
  3. Stakeholder organization you will work with (or plan for developing that connection)
  4. Pilot research/capacity building plan
  5. Timeline (6-8 months from the time of funding is expected)

Tier II proposal requirements

The goal of Tier II proposals, which must have stakeholder organization representation in the problem definition (or other strong stakeholder representation), is to conduct significant, publishable, stakeholder-informed research at the intersection of race, disability and technology. 

Tier II proposals require a letter of intent before they are invited for submission. When they are invited, you should submit the main proposal and supplemental documents as specified below. 

Letter of intent

Each letter of intent must contain the following sections:

  1. Title of the proposed project.
  2. Approximate budget request.
  3. Names, titles, email addresses, and organizational affiliation for each member of the project team. More team members can be added at a later date if you are invited to submit a full application.
  4. Overview of proposed research plan (500 word maximum).

Note: you must have already engaged stakeholders at the planning level at the time of submission of a letter of intent if you are planning to apply for a Tier II Proposal.

Main proposal

Your proposal should include the following parts:

  • Cover Page (1 page) – Title, name and department of PIs, proposal abstract, and plan for informing proposed work from stakeholder representatives (250 words)
  • Proposed Work (up to 2 pages) – What is the topic you will address, why is it important; and what will you do about it? What will the project deliver that will positively impact people of color with disabilities? How will you evaluate these deliverables? 
  • Expected Impact on People with Disabilities (½ page) – How will this project ensure representation of people of color with disabilities in the work? How will it contribute to disability advocacy, disability rights, disability justice, and/or disability communities? 
  • Ethics And Broader Impact Plans (up to 1 page) – Provide a Disability Justice– and/or DisCrit-based analysis of the proposed work to show its relevance to the research being done by and for people of color with disabiliites. Also address any potential ethical concerns, if relevant. If there is legitimate and foreseeable harm possible, how will you address it? Also describe how the proposal team will ensure broader impact of the research in stakeholder communities. 
  • Project Workplan and Timeline (½ page) – What is the expected work plan for this project? Work should take place over 9-18 months. The work plan should Include key activities and their expected durations. A Gantt chart is encouraged but not required.

Supplemental documents

Both Tier I and Tier II proposals should include:

  • Project budget and brief justification (up to 1 page) – What is the total amount being sought (up to $15,000 for Tier I and up to $35,000 for Tier II), and how does it break down by major activity or category? Include a budget table and brief budget justification including time to spend on the work by key personnel. Note that budgets should realistically reflect the costs of pursuing the work. Budgets that seem inflated will not be judged favorably. The budget table should include:
  • Salaries and Wages (including benefits)
  • User study fees and contractual services
  • Travel if necessary for stakeholder interaction (i.e., not conference travel)
  • Supplies and equipment
  • Tuition

Neither indirect costs nor alcohol will be allowed. 

For Tier II proposals, an extra $15,000 is available specifically to compensate community partners if there is a true bidirectional relationship in place, as demonstrated by a letter of support. Otherwise the limit is $35,000.

References (no page limit) 

Attach a list of references at the end. References do not count in your submission’s page length.

Project team

A 1-page description of the project team. Does the proposal have a team with expertise in race, disability and technology? How will they collaborate? What existing support do they have for this work (e.g. it is ongoing; closely related funding (and how it differs); etc)

Attachments: In addition, append a 1- to 2-page CV, resume, or biosketch for each PI or person requesting salary and a current and pending document for each PI. 

Suggested reviewers

If you would like to suggest reviewers, you may.

Submit your proposal by email

Questions?

Applicants may contact Jennifer Mankoff, jmankoff@uw.edu with questions.