[BlindMath] Advice for blind biomedical engineering student

[prayner at unimelb.edu.au]

Dear Lucas et al., clearly CMU needs to get its act together but that
will take longer so I'll focus on some things you can do in the
absence of functioning systems:
1) Get to know your lecturers. Talk to the course coordinator and ask
that you can meet the lecturers ahead of each subject. Have a feasible
set of requests you can make to them, e.g. slides made available in
advance in source not rendered form, verbalise use of laser pointers
etc.
2) Get written material in source form rather than pdf.
Publishers are less helpful here than they should be but authors
are often helpful. You won't necessarily know the authors but your lecturers
might well. One email from your lecturer with you in copy can open
useful doors.
3) Targeted use of friends/colleagues. Make requests really specific.
My pattern is something like
* extract text from pdf/whatever
* Most of the equations I can guess but I will ask things like "could
you read me equation 4?"
4) Make sure the course coordinator knows there's a problem. If local
workarounds like this are necessary they're often a person who can
help.
If you can only do one of these make it #1
One last piece of advice is psychological and controversial. It's not
your job to fix this, it's your job to get a good Masters. Keep
looking for the workarounds and kludges and find a way through. We all
do it. 
cheers
Peter
Lucas Nadolskis via BlindMath writes:
>Hello Jonathan.
>Hope this email finds you well.
>
>My name is Lucas Nadolskis.
>I am currently a masters student in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
>
>I have followed some of your emails in BlindMath, and I hope it is okay to send you this private email.
>
>I have studied disciplines related with statistics throughout my life, I got my BS in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. And I have always faced the general challenges that a totally blind student has on such classes with professors that had never seen a blind student before.
>
>However, since I started my masters I am having difficulties I din’t have previously. Due to the size of CMU their office for disability is much smaller meaning I am doing much of the adaptations myself.
>
>Those challenges include:
>Conversion of papers heavily related on math content.
>Accessing the slides from classes.
>Reading textbooks.
>Reading extra papers to facilitate understanding of the subject.
>
>I wonder if you would be able to give me any kind of advice on any of these topics?
>
>Thank you vey much.
>
>Kind regards.
>
>Lucas Nadolskis.
>
>
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