[nabs-l] doing research in a lab and a blindness question

Thu Oct 29 00:52:48 UTC 2009

Hi Cindy and all,

Cindy, if you'd like to fly out to Colorado, we could use your
assistance in my social psych lab! <Smile>

Joking aside, I think you've stumbled on what I consider to be one of
the biggest challenges facing blind students and professionals. On one
hand, most careers nowadays are accessible to the blind. However, it
seems like the greatest accessibility hurdles tend to lie in the
entry-level jobs within a career. So while a blind professor can
perform her duties no problem by doing many of the tasks (lesson
planning, research design, data analysis) independently while hiring
research assistants or TA's to handle visual things, entry-level
research and teaching assistants don't always have the ability to hire
subordinates and are expected to do many of the tasks that require
less thinking, such as data entry and filing, which also tend to be
more visual/less directly accessible. The catch-22, of course, is that
all professionals need to get through the entry-level jobs before they
can attain the status that allows them to do more of the thinking and
to delegate visual tasks to subordinates. I am of the belief that one
of our main priorities should be working to make entry-level positions
(in every field) more accessible to the blind so we can climb the
chain of command and gain experience just like our sighted
counterparts.

In the meantime, you have some options. The way I beat the challenge
and got to be a graduate student in psychology without being a
research assistant for someone else first was to design and carry out
my own research study. Many universities offer an optional honors
project or independent study where undergraduates can design a
research project and carry it out under a professor's supervision. Not
only was the job fully accessible (because I was in charge rather than
working for someone else) but this kind of thing looks great when
applying to graduate school if that's what you want to do. If your
school offers something like this, perhaps find a professor who shares
some of your research interests and see if you can do that instead of,
or in addition to, working in a lab. The study I designed (some of you
participated in it three years ago) was an online survey--relatively
painless to collect the data and I got to learn how to design a study
and analyze data in the process, things that RA's often don't get to
do because these jobs are generally reserved for more advanced
researchers.

If you want to work in a lab, I do think using a reader could be a
viable option. You  certainly can handle animals and take measurements
with a reader's help. If you work in a lab with human subjects, you
will probably be expected to help with "subject running" which is
basically meeting with a group of experiment participants and giving
them printed materials or reading a script to them--both easy and
completely accessible. Of course, if you know how to use a stats
program or even just organize data in MS-Excel, that will be a skill
that the other lab members will appreciate. Research assistants also
often help with coding data, which is basically reading participants'
responses and making a judgment about what category they fit into,
evaluating their quality, etc. For example in my current study we have
people write essays, get feedback and then write them again, so we
want to see if their work gets better as a consequence of the
feedback. Obviously this last thing is only applicable to human
subjects. I don't know much about what RA's are expected to do with
animal experimentation, but if you go to the professor with an open
mind and show him/her the skills you can offer, I'm sure they will
find a way to make use of your talents. It's also helpful if you offer
to select the reader yourself, and to pay the person if you have the
means to, or select a volunteer reader from a campus volunteer
organization. The professor might offer to pay the reader or recommend
people to serve in that role, but it's a good idea to at least offer
to manage this accommodation on your own so they don't think bringing
you on is a particular burden of time or money for them.

>From a fellow psychologist--best of luck and tell us how it goes. What
area of psychology are you thinking of going into?

Arielle

On 10/29/09, Jedi <loneblindjedi at samobile.net> wrote:
> Mary,
>
> Cindy, or any other blind person for that matter, is still doing the
> work even with a reader. The reader is doing all the visual work. For
> example, the reader announces digital readouts on scales, but the blind
> experimentor still manipulates and weighs the rats. The blind person is
> still responsible for taking notes and preparing data. The reader is
> only responsible for saying things like "The rat's chasing it's tail"
> or something. It's up to the blind person to know what tail chasing
> might mean in relationship to the experiment and presents the data to
> the supervisor. In other words, the blind experimentor does everything:
> she manipulates the environment, takes down the data, makes appropriate
> inferences, etc. The only thing the reader does is supply visual
> information about what's going on in places where visual information is
> necessary. It's no different than a deaf person using an interpreter.
>
> Respectfully,
> Jedi
>
>
> Original message:
>> Hi Jedi,
>> I definitely don't want to discourage anyone from working in a lab, but
>> to me, this doesn't seem that simple. Yes, Cindy could get a reader who
>> could tell her what the rats are doing, but then what would Cindy be
>> contributing to the lab? Often as an undergraduate lab assistant, you
>> get the "grunt work" of collecting data or physically running
>> experiments while the more experienced faculty and graduate students do
>> a lot of the thinking. There are certainly lots of exceptions, but if
>> the main point of Cindy's job would be to observe the rats and gather
>> data about their behavior, and she hired a reader to help her
>> accomplish those tasks, wouldn't she just be hiring someone to do her
>> job? Maybe it would be better if she could find a lab project she could
>> contribute to independently with marginal, if any, assistance from a
>> reader. There are probably several options, and personally, I would
>> feel a lot better about my job if I knew I wasn't relying on a
>>  sighted person to do most of it.
>
>> Respectfully,Mary
>> --- On Tue, 10/27/09, Jedi <loneblindjedi at samobile.net> wrote:
>
>
>> From: Jedi <loneblindjedi at samobile.net>
>> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] doing research in a lab and a blindness question
>> To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
>> Date: Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 5:48 AM
>
>
>> Who says you can't watch rats when you're blind? Why can't someone just
>> describe what's happening with the rats just like in DVS or when using
>> a live reader? So long as the experiment doesn't actually require you
>> to visually perceive the rats, who cares if you're blind? Just get a
>> reader.
>
>> Respectfully,
>> Jedi
>
>
>> Original message:
>>> Hi,
>>> If it is the professor and not an assistant, yes, by all means email
>>> her, and let her know that you are still interested in her research,
>>> however, you are blind and cannot watch rats on videos. However, there
>>> are plenty of ways  that oyu could effectively work in a lab, so
>>> request a meeting. Let her know though, since that way se will be able
>>> to think about ways htat you could work. Also, I hope you sent her a
>>> resume, so that she knows about your experience and evaluates you on
>>> that rathr than on your blindness.
>>> Mary
>
>>> On 10/26/09, Cindy Bennett <clb5590 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I am very interested in working in the psych lab on campus. There are
>>>> opportunities for undergrad students to get course credit for doing
>>>> this, but they have to interview with and be accepted by a professor.
>>>> I met with one of my psych professors today who I know does research
>>>> just to learn the logistics of the process, and he told me a lot of
>>>> details and answered a lot of my questions which was helpful. So I am
>>>> now in the process of corresponding with professors whose research
>>>> interests me.
>
>>>> My question is this. In my initial email, I simply expressed my
>>>> interest cordially and explained why I was interested in their
>>>> research. However, I got a reply of a professor who is willing to work
>>>> with me, but her research is concentrated on observing rats’ behavior
>>>> and taking measures such as wait and stuff. She may very well be the
>>>> only professor to reply positively to my desire to do research with,
>>>> so I want to say in an effective way that I may not be able to perform
>>>> these tasks, but I am still interested in meeting with her to discuss
>>>> whether there are jobs that I could effectively do in her lab. Should
>>>> I just respond that I am interested and arrange a time to meet, or
>>>> should I say that I am blind in my email but still request a time to
>>>> meet as well as mention the fact that there still might be ways in
>>>> which I contribute? I guess what I am curious about is, is it wrong
>>>> for me to say that I am interested but rather than meet with her to
>>>> confirm things like my response would connote, I would really be
>>>> meeting with her to let her know that there are several aspects of her
>>>> data collection that I cannot do? Should I turn down the opportunity?
>>>> I am all about the belief that I can do anything, but I wouldn’t want
>>>> some professor to take me on if there wasn’t enough things that I
>>>> could effectively do.
>
>>>> I would appreciate your input; in whatever I say, I just want to be
>>>> sure not to make my blindness look like a major hindrance, because
>>>> then she might rethink whether she wants to accept me, but I don’t
>>>> want to mislead her.
>
>>>> Thanks, and any lab tips that any of you experienced research
>>>> assistants have are helpful.
>
>>>> Cindy
>
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>
>
>>> --
>>> Mary Fernandez
>>> Emory University 2012
>>> P.O. Box 123056
>>> Atlanta Ga.
>>> 30322
>>> Phone: 732-857-7004
>>> In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that
>>> greatness is never a given. It must be earned.
>>> President Barack Obama
>
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-- 
Arielle Silverman
President, National Association of Blind Students
Phone:  602-502-2255
Email:
nabs.president at gmail.com
Website:
www.nabslink.org