The origin of equity/equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives at universities are rooted in the 2005 Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) charter from Advance HE in the UK, which has the purpose of initiating actions that generate gender equality in UK universities. Since then, Advance HE also set up a “race charter” to deal with equality issues that are experienced by ethnic staff and students within higher education. Today “equality, diversity and inclusion” and “equity, diversity and inclusion” (from now on both called EDI) are used as phrases by universities in many countries to highlight ongoing efforts to rectify the problems that are linked to EDI of students, non-academic staff, and academic staff, whereby the focus broadened from gender to include other underrepresented groups, including disabled students, disabled non-academic staff, and disabled academic staff. How EDI efforts are operationalized impacts the success and utility of EDI efforts for disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff, and impacts the social situation of disabled people in general. As such, we analysed in a first step using a scoping review approach, how disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff are engaged with in the EDI focused academic literature. Little engagement (16 sources, some only abstracts, some abstracts, and full text) with disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff was found. This bodes ill for the utility of existing EDI efforts for disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff, but also suggests an opening for many fields to critically analyse EDI efforts in relation to disabled students, non-academic staff, and academic staff, the intersectionality of disabled people with other EDI groups and the impact of the EDI efforts on the social situation of disabled people beyond educational settings. The problematic findings are discussed through the lens of ability studies and EDI premises, as evident in EDI policy documents, EDI academic, and non-academic literature covering non-disability groups, and policy documents, such as the 2017 “UNESCO Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers” and the 1999 “UNESCO World Conference on Sciences” recommendations that engage with the situation of researchers and research in universities.

Research experience is beneficial for undergraduate students for many reasons. For example, it is argued in academic literature and in reports produced by various organizations that engage with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and science education that undergraduate research experience increases the graduation rate in STEM disciplines as well as the amount of students thinking about STEM careers. As such, being researchers should also be of benefit to undergraduate disabled students in all disciplines including STEM education. However, given that undergraduate disabled students encounter many problems within post-secondary education, including STEM education, undergraduate disabled students might encounter problems in becoming researchers. Policies are to be guided by knowledge and evidence. However, knowledge and evidence deficits exist in relation to the lived experience of disabled people. Undergraduate disabled students could decrease the knowledge deficit as researchers and knowledge producers. The numbers of disabled academic faculty are judged as being too low and efforts are under way to increase the number of disabled academics. Increasing the number of undergraduate disabled researchers might increase the available pool of disabled students that pursue an academic career. Given the important role research performed by undergraduate disabled students can play and given that many studies highlight problems for disabled students in post-secondary education in general, we used a scoping review approach to investigate the coverage of undergraduate disabled students as knowledge producers, including as researchers, in the academic literature. Using various search strategies, we obtained 1299 initial hits. However, only 15 had relevant content. No study investigated how undergraduate disabled students select their research topics or how they are enticed to pursue research projects outside of a course-based framework. No study looked at the linkage between being an undergraduate disabled researcher and career choices or using the obtained research skills on the undergraduate level in one's role as a community member after graduation. Our findings suggest an opportunity for many fields, ranging from disability studies to STEM education, to generate more empirical data and conceptual work on the role of undergraduate disabled students as knowledge producers including as researchers. Such studies could help to increase the numbers of undergraduate disabled students as knowledge producers, including researchers, which in turn could help to increase (a) the number of disabled academics, (b) the number of disabled students who perform research in the community after graduation, (c) the degree success of disabled students and (d) the knowledge available on the social situation of disabled people.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) advancements increasingly impact society and AI/ML ethics and governance discourses have emerged. Various countries have established AI/ML strategies. “AI for good” and “AI for social good” are just two discourses that focus on using AI/ML in a positive way. Disabled people are impacted by AI/ML in many ways such as potential therapeutic and non-therapeutic users of AI/ML advanced products and processes and by the changing societal parameters enabled by AI/ML advancements. They are impacted by AI/ML ethics and governance discussions and discussions around the use of AI/ML for good and social good. Using identity, role, and stakeholder theories as our lenses, the aim of our scoping review is to identify and analyze to what extent, and how, AI/ML focused academic literature, Canadian newspapers, and Twitter tweets engage with disabled people. Performing manifest coding of the presence of the terms “AI”, or “artificial intelligence” or “machine learning” in conjunction with the term “patient”, or “disabled people” or “people with disabilities” we found that the term “patient” was used 20 times more than the terms “disabled people” and “people with disabilities” together to identify disabled people within the AI/ML literature covered. As to the downloaded 1540 academic abstracts, 234 full-text Canadian English language newspaper articles and 2879 tweets containing at least one of 58 terms used to depict disabled people (excluding the term patient) and the three AI terms, we found that health was one major focus, that the social good/for good discourse was not mentioned in relation to disabled people, that the tone of AI/ML coverage was mostly techno-optimistic and that disabled people were mostly engaged with in their role of being therapeutic or non-therapeutic users of AI/ML influenced products. Problems with AI/ML were mentioned in relation to the user having a bodily problem, the usability of AI/ML influenced technologies, and problems disabled people face accessing such technologies. Problems caused for disabled people by AI/ML advancements, such as changing occupational landscapes, were not mentioned. Disabled people were not covered as knowledge producers or influencers of AI/ML discourses including AI/ML governance and ethics discourses. Our findings suggest that AI/ML coverage must change, if disabled people are to become meaningful contributors to, and beneficiaries of, discussions around AI/ML.

Burnout is a problem within the workplace including in higher education, the activity of activism, and in reaction to experiencing systemic discrimination in daily life. Disabled people face problems in all of these areas and therefore are in danger of experiencing “disability burnout”/”disablism burnout”. Equity/equality, diversity, and inclusion” (EDI) linked actions are employed to improve the workplace, especially for marginalized groups including disabled people. How burnout is discussed and what burnout data is generated in the academic literature in relation to EDI and disabled people influences burnout policies, education, and research related to EDI and to disabled people. Therefore, we performed a scoping review study of academic abstracts employing SCOPUS, the 70 databases of EBSCO-HOST and Web of Science with the aim to obtain a better understanding of the academic coverage of burnout concerning disabled people and EDI. We found only 14 relevant abstracts when searching for 12 EDI phrases and five EDI policy frameworks. Within the 764 abstracts covering burnout and different disability terms, a biased coverage around disabled people was evident with disabled people being mostly mentioned as the cause of burnout experienced by others. Only 30 abstracts covered the burnout of disabled people, with eight using the term “autistic burnout”. Disabled activists’ burnout was not covered. No abstract contained the phrase “disability burnout”, but seven relevant hits were obtained using full-text searches of Google Scholar. Our findings suggest that important data is missing to guide evidence-based decision making around burnout and EDI and burnout of disabled people.