[Blindmath] Struggling Mathematics Student

[Wheatley, Richard]

Dear Clayton
I am a second year physicist from England, so my experiences may not be relevant but anyway:
Here there is a dedicated department for disabled students, if there is such a department in your college you should track them down and establish contact with them. In my case the disability team put me in touch with the disability contact within the physics faculty and I hardly ever speak to the  main disability office anymore.
What format do you access your work and notes? Generally if you are studying a maths based subject under tutors with no V I training it is best to work in LaTeX, using a laptop and depending on preference a braille strip and or the access to LaTeX software.
The access to LaTeX software does take some time to get used to, I have a frend who has just started maths first year and I had to learn LaTeX on the run last year, but it is worth the time to learn. Most lecturers seem to use LaTeX in writing their own lecture notes, making the creation of accessable notes simple for your support.
Best wishes
Richard 
-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Clayton Jacobs via Blindmath
Sent: 16 October 2014 14:26
To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Blindmath] Struggling Mathematics Student

I am a college student currently taking College Algebra With Limits and Statistics. In both classes, I am not doing well. In College Algebra With Limits, the professor speeds through his lectures, and even though I type out the equations he puts on the board, I can't keep up with him. To make matters worse, my Orion Ti-84 Plus calculator decided to give on me after only having it for 4 months. The note packets are inaccessible, and while the disability department at my college is translating the packets, it is almost too late in the semester. Additionally, the professor does not explain the steps he uses to solve the problems, so my tutor has to do all of the work in teaching me. While I have aced my homework, I have failed both of my exams so far. The first exam was inaccessible, and the reader couldn't even read the exam properly to me to even make sense of it. The second exam, which I took yesterday, covered material not even on the review sheet. Here was one of the problems verbatim, which I tried my best to solve. Factor the expression into a product of linear factors given that 1-i is a zero. f(x)=x^4-7x^3+18x^2-26x+12 In Statistics, the professor was great in trying to get me accessible notes, but fell short when formulas were concerned. I still do not know how to compute the standard error, margin of error, confidence intervals, and finding probabilities between z scores or areas. I am at a loss of what to do at this point. Trying to explain accessibility with formulas has been a nightmare, especially with my College Algebra With Limits professor, who has adamantly refused to translate the equations into accessible form because that requires too much work for him, according to his statement. I had to file a federal complaint against this college last year for failing to accommodate, in which a mediation agreement was reached. Yet, in many ways, it seems the faculty have treated this as a drop in the bucket. I have had such a bad experience with collegiate accommodations that I have questioned why I even went back to college in the first place. 
 		 	   		  
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