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Professional exchanges, such as internships and fellowships, provide opportunities for international visitors to gain career experience or to share their knowledge or skills while living in the United States. These exchanges can last from a few weeks to a few years. Many people with disabilities have traveled to the U.S. to gain career experience or to share their expertise in a variety of professional fields.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by Mobility International USA, NCDE is your free resource to start you on your journey. Get to know us!
Tip: Download the accessible infographic under Documents or view on Flickr.
Minneapolis winters can be so frigid, even the locals think twice before wandering out. But snow and sub-zero temperatures did nothing to deter Dr. Magteld Smith from making the most of her Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship while placed at the University of Minnesota. Nearly every day she bundled up against weather unlike anything she’d experienced in her native South Africa and trekked to the school’s libraries to study.
We invite you to take a journey with us through this issue of A World Awaits You and to think about how studying, researching, interning or volunteering in Sub-Saharan Africa — or coming from this region as a visitor to the United States — will shape your own contributions.
Welcome to the online A World Awaits You (AWAY) journal, International Students edition, promoting the #Access2USA campaign! The goal of #Access2USA is to increase participation of international students with disabilities studying in the United States, and this AWAY issue introduces you to international students with all types of disabilities who have successfully studied in the United States and want to share the impact of their programs and tips to encourage more students to apply.
Two arched windows let light into a new gathering place in the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission and its EducationUSA Advising Center. It’s less about the setting and more about what is inside this corner space that matters – new accessible computer stations.
Computers equipped with screen readers and magnifiers, two large monitors, and a desktop magnifier, which will enable students with vision disabilities to have access to test preparation materials and information about U.S. study options.
Rebecca Zeigler Mano, EducationUSA Country Coordinator for Zimbabwe, has always worked to make higher education an option for many marginalized communities. She worked for a few years in the U.S. with high achieving, low income students to make sure they knew about access to higher education and scholarship opportunities. This thread continued when Rebecca started working with EducationUSA-Zimbabwe in 2000 and noticed little access for students with disabilities in local universities.
A year after I started working as an educational adviser at the Fulbright Commission in Austria, I realized that I had not to the best of my knowledge encountered a single Austrian student who had any type of disability, not even a minor learning disability. A few weeks later, while tabling at a higher education fair in Vienna, I noticed a group of deaf students standing along the periphery of the room.
Because I grew up in a small Greek city where I never socialized with other Deaf people, I never thought there were other people like me. From kindergarten through high school, I attended a mainstream school that didn’t provide support services, nor were teachers aware of Deaf culture and deafness. As a child, I didn’t really realize I was Deaf, despite being born with hearing loss too extensive to use hearing aids. Instead, I considered myself a person with a problem in my ears and difficulty interacting well with hearing people.
Ingrid Sala-Bars wanted to strengthen her academic research, and international exchange allowed her to do just that. Ingrid is from Spain, has a hearing loss and wears hearing aids.
Do you plan to take the TOEFL or GRE test? You may be eligible to receive disability-related accommodations through the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers these and other tests. But start soon. All requests for testing accommodations must be reviewed and approved by ETS before you can schedule your test!
The information on this page will give you a general idea of what to expect. For complete details, instructions, and requirements, visit ETS' Information for Test Takers with Disabilities under Related Links.
Although I was born in a small, rural town in southwestern Japan, growing up I had an interest in foreign affairs. However, my family could not imagine that their son could travel outside of Japan.
It's official: You're well on your way to your U.S. studies. Now is the time to notify the school's disability office about your disability-related needs, search for financial aid, and learn about visa rules and regulations.
Any college or university is a potential match for an international student or scholar with a disability. Learn which factors to consider when browsing institutions, and follow next steps for applying to your dream school.
The United States has thousands of colleges and universities across the country. Each is unique in its own way, but all schools have something in common: they cannot discriminate against anyone due to his or her disability.
U.S. schools are responsible for making their courses, campus, activities and services accessible to people with disabilities. This includes physical access to college buildings, transportation, housing, and other facilities.