[nfbcs] Seeking suggestions for helping blind students with math

[David Andrews]

I think what you describe is as much a skills problem, and a teaching 
problem, as a Math problem per se.  I think Math has been visual for 
a long time!  In K-12 schools, I think they rely on technology too 
much, and get people through stuff, without them really learning it.

I don't know the answers to your questions -- which are good ones.  I 
will suggest two other lists that we run, blind math, and nobe-l for 
teachers. You can find all our lists at www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/

The blindmath list has many of the world's experts in  math and blind 
persons, on it.

Braille is of course the best answer, but is not always an option.

Dave

At 05:45 PM 1/11/2017, Deborah Armstrong via nfbcs wrote:
>This might be a bit off-topic, but here goes. I am blind and work at 
>a community college, mostly with LD students. But because I am 
>blind, blind students naturally see me as a mentor though I'm just 
>the alternate media specialist. My job is to acquire their books in 
>alternate formats, to convert the books if necessary and to assist 
>them in learning to read with access technology. I am not expected 
>to worry about whether they can pass math, but I do!
>
>Anyway, I know of three students this quarter, and there could be 
>more, who are struggling with math, either pre-algebra, algebra or statistics.
>
>When I was in school I was expected to use the abacus for 
>calculating and the Braille writer with Nemeth to work problems. I 
>was an early experiment in mainstreaming, so never took any math in 
>high school at all. I wasn't good in math. It wasn't until I learned 
>to write software that I discovered how much fun it was to craft 
>programs to solve problems. So I'm not really mentor material for 
>these struggling students.
>
>I feel powerless about how to help them, and nowadays if you don't 
>pass intermediat algebra you can't get even an AA. And if you don't 
>pass statistics most humanities degrees are also out of reach. With 
>my LD students I can help them find tutors, or get the book from 
>Learning Ally, or show them how to mask off part of a textbook page 
>so they can avoid confusion while reading. But the basic problem for 
>my BVI students is that even the tutors have no idea how to work 
>with someone who cannot see.
>
>Nearly all my BVI students have iPADS and yet I've never found an 
>app that will let them work problems like a sighted person using a 
>pencil. Seems like there should be an app to do this. And as for 
>Braille, I haven't seen any Braille readers entering this college 
>for the past seven years. A few students can see well enough to 
>magnify the class whiteboard for short periods but often it's not 
>effective enough to truly follow the instructor.
>
>The students succeed well enough in other courses where they can 
>take notes on an iDEVICE, and use NVDA or VoiceOver or Zoom on their 
>Mac at home to go online. But with math you have to write down the 
>intermediate steps as you solve a problem, be able to show your work 
>to your tutor, and follow the instructor solving problems in class.
>
>And I go to classes with them to observe the problem and the 
>instructors are all working equations on the board, pointing to 
>various parts of the equation and not even speaking in full 
>sentences. How has math become such a highly visual subject to teach?
>
>Anyway, I hate seeing all these young people fail. How can I help them?
>
>--Debee