[NABS-L] Urgent - Studying College Level STEM Without Tactile Material

[Gene Kim]

Hey Bhavya,

First and foremost, I sincerely hope that the OAE will be able to find a
solution—the transition to college is already difficult enough. I'll list a
few classes I presume you may be interested in based on your e-mail and
previous conversations and my thoughts on each, but generally, while I do
think you could build the first year's courses in a way that makes tactile
graphics not as necessary, if you find that your options are too limited or
that you aren't satisfied with your selection, maybe it is worth
considering taking a quarter or few off. You can take a leave of absence at
almost any time throughout the year. I would also caution that since some
courses are offered only once/twice a year (e.g. Chem 31M), if you decide
to enroll this upcoming year and decide not to take those
particular classes, you may end up having to take them as a second or even
third year in standing, which could delay some of the upper divs that list
those particular classes as prerequisites as well. That being said, I think
if you're confident in your ability to visualize graphs/your
spacial reasoning, maybe a description and alt text would be enough. I
would also strongly recommend investing in something like a draftsman or
sensational blackboard so that you will be able to draw your own
low-fidelity TGs. Perhaps you could confirm with the visual descriptionist
if what you understood and drew are accurate (e.g. ask the descriptionist
to explain a Chemical bond's structure, try to draw it out yourself, then
show and ask them if what you drew is accurate to reassure yourself that
you understood it). With that, here are some classes separated by subject
and my subjective thoughts:

Chemistry:
Chem 33: I am quite confident that this class dives deeply into molecular
structure, so I imagine it will be very challenging without TGs. This class
is also infamous for being extremely difficult, so I would advise to take
it when you have every resource at your disposal.
(I unfortunately know very little about Chem 31A/B/M, aside from the fact
that 31M is also a very difficult class. I would suggest trying to find an
old syllabus to see how visual the concepts are or reaching out to the
professor. I think these classes in general will be less involved than Bio
or Physics, the latter of which I took and feel like TGs were extremely
helpful but maybe not necessary if I had an effective reader and alt text.)

Math:
Math 21: Briefly looking at these concepts, I think you'll fair well
without TGs. A lot of these concepts are more numerical than graphical
(limits, integration techniques, series/sequences, etc.) I'm sure graphs
will pop up, but I don't remember them being extremely complicated (I think
alt text and visual descriptionist should be enough, and even more so if
you're able to sketch some of these out using the tactile drawing tools
mentioned above.)
Math 51: I think this class is extremely visual and graph intensive
(especially once you begin to work with contour plots and graphing beyond
2D come week 4). I would strongly suggest taking this when you have tactile
graphics available, but I do think it can be done without them (just expect
to invest a lot of time and effort because the class moves near
unforgivingly quickly.)

Computer Science:
CS 106A: I am quite confident that you would do well in this class without
TGs. The graphs you may encounter will be relatively straight forward, and
the CS department is extremely skilled at accommodating for the blind.
CS 106B/107: These are also very doable without TGs (I personally didn't
rely on them much). However, I will say that these courses use more graphs
than 106A. Likely the main diagrams here would be tree diagrams (that may
get a little complicated if just reading alt text) for things like
recursion, decision trees, etc (i.e. a parent tree entry branches off into
three children, and each of those children branch off into two more
children, and so on.) You also work a lot with pointers, and some of the
lecturers like to work out how pointers change the thing they are pointing
at by drawing diagrams. I didn't need a TG to understand this, but it did
take a lot of thinking and visualizing for me to convince myself that I
understood it.

Psych:
Psych 1: I believe most of the concepts here will be terminology and
conceptually-based. I believe there is a neuroscience unit where you are
taught various regions of the brain, which may be a little difficult to
visualize without a TG but is still doable in my opinion. The class also
has an emphasis on research design/different kinds of study techniques,
which may involve some simple graphs, but those shouldn't be too difficult
to visualize.
Psych 70: This class uses almost no graphics. If you're interested in
social psychology to any extent, I think this would be a perfectly
non-compromised and exciting experience without TGs.

PWR/Philosophy/Linguistics/Creative Writing:
Anything in this general space doesn't rely on TGs at all (unless there is
a supplemental graph to a study you are reading for PWR or if you take a
Linguistics class that focuses on phonology or acoustics). Phil 1, Phil 2,
Phil 80, Linguistics 1, Psych 140, English 9CE, and English 90 are all
great classes a lot of frosh take that would be exciting and not
compromised without access to TGs.

There are certainly enough classes here (and plenty I haven't mentioned on
explorecourses.stanford.edu) to fill a few quarters, but again if you find
that one quarter there aren't all that many classes that seem compelling or
workable, maybe it's not a bad idea to request a leave of absence (course
selection for the upcoming quarter is generally around week 6 or 7 of the
current quarter, giving you plenty of time to think things through). I'd
also be more than happy to give random class recommendations offline if
you'd like some help filtering the thousands of classes our university
offers each quarter.

Best of luck going forward, and please don't hesitate to reach out if I can
help in any way (hopefully this e-mail helped somewhat).

Kindly,
Gene
Gene Sung-Ho Kim | B.S. Candidate, Symbolic Systems | Stanford University
Secretary | California Association of Blind Students

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 8:48 PM Bhavya shah via NABS-L <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> As an international incoming freshman at a US university, I am now
> faced with the real possibility of studying for the entirety of my
> frosh year online. There are so many other factors to consider, but
> this mail is about one specific one.
>
> I plan on studying subjects and taking classes that have visual
> content like graphs, diagrams and other figures, i.e. STEM and related
> areas. Since I will be enrolled remotely, my university's Office of
> Accessible Education has assured me (a) alt text for images in my
> study material, and (b) a visual descriptionist who will be a graduate
> student in the subject of the class. However, what is very uncertain
> right now is access to tactile graphics because of all the timelines
> and challenges of international shipping. We are still exploring this,
> but there is a good chance I won't be able to receive tactile graphics
> for the period in which I am enrolled remotely.
>
> Which subjects do you think have a substantial visual component to it?
> I am not interested in physics or biology, but definitely want to take
> up Mathematics, try a Chemistry class or two, study new disciplines
> like Linguistics, and be able to have as many options open for
> coursework.
> For these fields, how important do you think is tactile material to
> properly understand and absorb the subject matter? Could I do without
> it and be successful while relying only on textual and verbal means
> instead?
> Do you think it is generally possible for me to design my first year
> course load a little differently so as to take only those classes
> which are less graphical in nature? I am thinking I could focus more
> on probability than conics in mathematics for instance. It is worth
> keeping in mind here that not all topics are are covered in frosh
> friendly courses so my ability to do this may be limited.
>
> The reason why I indicate urgency in the subject line is because I
> need to take my call about going ahead with remote enrollment or
> considering a gap year very soon. Any inputs or perspectives are
> hugely appreciated.
>
> Best Regards,
> Bhavya Shah
> Stanford University | Class of (hopefully) 2024
> ;
>
> _______________________________________________
> NABS-L mailing list
> NABS-L at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> NABS-L:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/gene.sh.kim%40gmail.com
>