Lesson 5 Accommodations: Blindness

Provide audiotaped, Brailled, or electronic-formatted lecture notes, handouts, and texts.

Give clear verbal descriptions of visual aids including video and printed content used throughout your presentation.

For writing activities, provide computer accommodations. Provide a document format that can be edited electronically by the student, such as an accessible PDF file, a Word document, or a plain text document. Consider a computer with optical character recognition, voice output, Braille screen display, and/or embossed Braille output. For more information, consult the video presentation and publication Working Together: Computers and People with Sensory Impairments or the AccessSTEM Knowledge Base.

Use tactile accommodations of graphic materials:

• Tools for creating raised-line drawings can be found at the American Printing House for the Blind.
• One method for drawing tactile lines on a map or diagram is to go over the lines with a pattern tracing wheel; to do this effectively, put something soft under the drawing or map first.
• Raised-line drawings can be created with fabric paint, a glue gun, or other commercially available materials, such as Wikki Stix.
• Additional information is available at Access2Science.

Consider having the student work with a partner and providing extra assistance if this activity presents significant challenges.