[Blindmath] accessibility issues (was: Is a Diploma in IT accessible enough for a blind student?)

Tue Nov 1 17:43:11 UTC 2016

The instructor, and most importantly, your school, would lose in this case.  You can file an official complaint with the office of civil rights with the department of education on-line.   

-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of John G Heim via Blindmath
Sent: Tuesday, November 1, 2016 10:22 AM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <blindmath at nfbnet.org>; Saaqib Mahmuud <saaqib1978 at yahoo.co.in>
Cc: John G Heim <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
Subject: [Blindmath] accessibility issues (was: Is a Diploma in IT accessible enough for a blind student?)

I doubt that the faculty senate at most universities would appreciate an instructor hiding behind a claim of academic freedom when choosing to not make his course materials accessible. If that works at your university, I seriously think you should transfer.

I used to be on the committee here at the University of Wisconsin that oversaw accessibility issues.  We got an application from a blind student for admission to our medical school. This student had been turned down by 50 universities already. But our faculty considered his blindness an asset. The student had a nearly perfect academic record and our faculty felt that if a blind student could get the kind of grades he had, we wanted him for our medical school.

So attitudes vary widely from one school to the next. But I don't think the attitude your instructor is showing would work here.

On 10/31/2016 05:58 PM, Sabra Ewing via Blindmath wrote:
> You could try the NFB computer science list. Blind people are successfully getting such degrees. From a blindness perspective, there should be no problems and it should be completely accessible, but professors and cited administrators find ways to make artificial barriers if that makes sense. It can be really hard to remove these barriers when you're dealing with people who don't know a lot about computer science. I am majoring in computer information systems, and one of the problems I am having is that my professor does not use the coding of best practices. The people who could help me implement appropriate accommodations say that he can do whatever he wants and it asking him to change would restrict his academic freedom. I cannot explain to them that when he does not label controls properly, use accessible objects, and so forth, I cannot understand or run the code. It really is very insulting because these practices are not hard to implement. They would not involve changing The
>   curriculum or anything, and I would be able to understand the code a lot better. They do other things to like intentionally making it harder for me to get copies of the course materials. Another thing is that my classmates are allowed to have one double-sided page of notes for their exam. I requested to have my notes in a word document. I was at first told him that I would have to print them out and have a reader read them to me, and then I was told that I will have to send the word document to the disability office ahead of time and get braille because I could use an electronic copy of my notes to somehow cheat on the test. I am alone in a room with a proctor the entire time I test. That proctor watches everything I do so there's no way I could she even if I wanted to. They seem so concerned with testing security and bureaucratic nonsense that they are basically treating me like a criminal when I haven't done anything to deserve such treatment.disability offices are generally
>   understaffed, and universities only care about having blind people there so they can fulfill a disability quota outlined for them by the government. They don't actually care if blind people are successful at their university, and they don't care if it means that blind people will end up in sheltered workshops or on SSI for the rest of their lives if they can't get a degree. Blind people are more at risk and sighted people for under employment, or for unemployment, so you would think that universities would care more about them, but they care less. They tried to violate the law in anyway they can, do the bare minimum, and so forth. At my university, they might as well have slapped me in the face because I'm top of all the problems I'm having there, they intentionally put braille signs up that convey no information. For example, they have a sign that says classroom, when the print sign and tells sighted people what room number it is. That's like saying that blind people are so stupid
>   that they don't know it's a classroom, but the actual room number should not matter to them. They find very creative ways to consistently and still the message that sighted people are more valued, and as a result, many blind people Drop out of college because they don't want to be treated that way and they have no resources to fight against it.
>
> Sabra Ewing
>
>> On Oct 31, 2016, at 7:07 AM, Saaqib Mahmuud via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Hello to the Blind Math community!
>>
>> My name is Saaqib Mahmood; I'm a visually impaired person from Abbottabad, Pakistan, with an MPhil in Mathematics and working as a mathematics lecturer at a mainstream college run by the local provincial government.
>>
>> The Pakistan Association of the Blind (PAB) is looking forward to starting a one-year Diploma in Information Technology (DIT) program for the blind students at their national Resource and Training Center (RTC) in Karachi.
>>
>> This DIT program, administered by the Sindh Board of Technical Education (SBTE), includes courses such as programming in C, VB.Net, and JAVA; web page designing and creation in HTML and other allied tools; and similar other high-tech courses in the field of computer science and information technology.
>>
>> I would be happy to send you the complete course outline.
>>
>> Is there any precedent of blind people taking and successfully completing such courses with the help of screen reading software such as JAWS and NVDA?
>>
>> If so, then can you put me in touch with any individual or organisation who can provide us technical support as and when we need?
>> Regards.
>>
>> Yours Faithfully,
>> Saaqib Mahmood,Lecturer in Mathematics,
>> Government Postgraduate College (GPGC) No. 1,
>> Abbottabad, PAKISTANPhone: +92-334-541-7958 (mobile + WhatsApp + Skype + Viber)Email: saaqib1978 at yahoo.co.inSkype: saaqib.mahmood
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
--
John G. Heim; jheim at math.wisc.edu; sip://jheim@sip.linphone.org

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