STEM is fully embedded into daily life situations. Often, our students tend to experience significant difficulties, particularly in mathematics and science, which lead to negative views of STEM. What strategies and resources can I use to facilitate and increase student participation and inclusion in STEM activities at home and school (specifically for my students with visual impairments and multiple disabilities)?
I have thought about this a great deal, because I was an early experiment in mainstreaming in the early 1960’s. I did well in English, History, Civics … all subjects requiring reading and understanding information. But math was a sighted guy at the front of the classroom scratch-scratching away on a blackboard. Sighted teachers typically do not know how to explain math in a non-visual manner.
However, I was a self-taught software engineer for almost thirty years after graduating from high school. Compuserve forums were my teacher, and because this was a text based format, people had to explain non-visually!
Anyway, back to your question. I think the big thing is to introduce counting and number manipulation in to every subject. Sighted kids who fear math also were often exposed to teaching methods that did not mesh with their learning style.
For example, teaching a child how to double or halve a recipe makes cooking math oriented. Teaching a child to count the petals on a flower, the cushions on a sofa, the magnets on a fridge, the dolls in their playroom, or the toy trucks … you get the idea.
For older kids, having them figure out how many songs they can fit on a flash drive, calculating the tip in a restaurant, deciding whether the sales tax means an item is too expensive for the amount of money they have in their pocket, understanding favorite sports players statistics or how many pages they can read in an hour also gets math involved in non-math interests. (My sighted sister still struggles with the concepts of bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes … she keeps running out of memory on her phone because she fills it with videos. Not just blind people are math illiterate.)
When I grew up it was cassettes, and I first got intrigued by math when trying to figure out how many songs I could fit on each side of a sixty-minute cassette. I must have been in the second grade then. There was the concept of time, and the idea that I didn’t want the tape to stop in the middle of a song. My seven-year-old brain really stretched over that.
And I am still illiterate when it comes to algebra, trigonometry, geometry, calculus, etc. simply because I have not found a non-visual way to learn it. But at least I have a very firm grasp in the math I need in my life.
I wish someone would get a grant to create a fully online, fully accessible set of math courses, kind of like Khan Academy but for blind and visually impaired learners of all ages.
Students with visual impairments and multiple disabilities benefit from STEM activities that are hands-on, meaningful, and accessible through multiple senses. Teachers can increase participation by using real objects, tactile models, 3D materials, tactile graphics, and auditory descriptions instead of relying only on visual information. STEM concepts can also be embedded into daily activities such as cooking, gardening, building, and exploring the environment to make learning more relevant.
Resources such as APH materials, tactile graphics tools, braille labels, and collaboration with TVIs, O&M specialists, therapists, and families can help create inclusive STEM experiences. Providing communication supports, adapted tools, and multiple ways for students to show understanding allows all learners to participate. The goal is to build curiosity, confidence, and problem-solving skills so students with visual impairments and multiple disabilities see themselves as capable STEM learners.
I feel like I heard that micro:bit is working on making their products more user-friendly so students with visual impairments can use their products.
I’d love to add to this thread! I’m a graduate student at UC Irvine, and I do research and outreach with blind students that are transitioning to or are in college studying STEM. One thing I’ve been learning from blind students is that math equation accessibility is really important to going into a STEM major. A digital math format we’ve heard that some blind students prefer is called LaTeX math. Math and computer science professors often write their notes and assignments in LaTeX or Microsoft Word documents (which support LaTeX math equations). These files are accessible! So, a blind student can access these files directly using a braille display and/or keyboard + screen reader like JAWS, and then submit assignments directly to their professors.
For my graduate research project, I created a website that aims to spread awareness to teachers about this LaTeX math format in an approachable way.
The website is called Access Digi Math! Feel free to check it out!
I’m also doing a study about the design of this website over this summer, and I would love to learn about math perspectives from teachers. If you feel inspired to support a student with her research, please take the survey linked on the website to help me improve the website!