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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman">Often times, it seems there is a paucity of creative and
proactive thought when it comes to finding access solutions. I applaud these
efforts and hope that work in this regard will continue. I like the fact that
the young lady had a ready reply for why she felt compelled to take STEM
courses. All too frequently, our students are discouraged from doing so, even if
their strength is STEM subject material, as it is felt work in these areas is
too difficult or inaccessible. </FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman">EG</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></P><BR><BR><BR>-----Original
Message-----<BR>From: Disabled Student Services in Higher Education
[mailto:DSSHE-L@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On Behalf Of Schnitzer, Anna<BR>Sent:
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 7:26 AM<BR>To:
DSSHE-L@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU<BR>Subject: Special Physics software for blind
student<BR><BR>How a Professor Gave a Blind Student a New Outlook on Science
November 21, 2011, 4:51 pm<BR><BR>By Alexandra Rice
<http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/author/arice><BR><BR>Amanda Lacy
was frustrated with her physics class and ready to drop it.<BR><BR>Ms. Lacy, a
blind student at Austin Community College, is a computer-science major who loves
her classes but often struggles in them, not because she doesn’t understand the
material, but because she doesn’t have access to adequate textbooks. And when
she started taking the introduction-to-physics class, things got even worse,
until a professor stepped in with a solution.<BR><BR>The college provides blind
students with digital copies of textbooks so they can listen to them on the
computer or read them using an electronic Braille display. But the figures and
graphs in Ms. Lacy’s physics book don’t easily translate the same way that text
does.<BR><BR>“There are many symbols that the computer doesn’t recognize,” Ms.
Lacy said, “so it just comes out as gibberish.” For example, Ms. Lacy said in an
interview, the computer will read ‘X squared’ simply as ‘X2′.<BR><BR>When Ms.
Lacy showed her digital textbook to her computer-science professor, Richard
Baldwin, he was shocked, she said. He told her if someone didn’t take her
problem seriously there was no way she would make it through the
course.<BR><BR>So Mr. Baldwin started working with Ms. Lacy for a few hours each
week, slowly going through the textbook and trying to explain the graphics to
her in a way that she understood. “He’d do whatever he could to get these
concepts across,” Ms. Lacy said. “He’d scratch them out on paper, draw them on
my hand, things like that.” While they were working together, Mr. Baldwin began
creating an open-access online tutorial
<http://cnx.org/content/col11294/latest/> for blind students
learning physics.<BR><BR>In Mr. Baldwin’s tutorials, equations are written using
only symbols found on keyboards so that everything is one-dimensional and
presented in a format that blind people can read. Using the tutorials, Ms. Lacy
excelled in her physics class and received an A in the course.<BR><BR>Working
with Ms. Lacy taught Mr. Baldwin many things, too, such as that blind people
can’t draw with much accuracy.?So he came up with a new software for that as
well. “I sent this thing to her at home, and the next time I saw her she was
pretty elated,” Mr. Baldwin said. “She told me, ‘Finally, I can doodle.’” Before
that, her physics professor would just allow her to skip the problems that
required sketches for answers. Now, Ms. Lacy says, she is working with the
software so that when she takes Physics II she can turn in her completed
homework with the rest of the students.<BR><BR>Sometimes people ask her why she
doesn’t just study something easier for blind students, like English or history,
Ms. Lacy says. What does she tell them? “Because I’ll get bored.”<BR><BR>This
entry was posted in Computer Science
<http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/category/computer-science> ,
Software <http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/category/software> ,
Uncategorized
<http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/category/uncategorized> . Bookmark
the permalink
<http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/how-a-professor-gave-a-blind-student-a-new-outlook-on-science/34424>
.<BR><BR>http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/how-a-professor-gave-a-blind-student-a-new-outlook-on-science/34424?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en<BR><BR>Anna
Ercoli Schnitzer<BR>Liaison/Disability Issues Librarian?Taubman Health Sciences
Library Coordinator, UM Council for Disability Concerns University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor 48109 schnitzr@umich.edu<BR><BR>You are subscribed to AERNet, The
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