Teaching Students with Visual Disabilities
A person is considered to be legally blind when their visual acuity, with correction, is 20/200 or lower. A visual impairment exists, when corrected vision is not better than 20/70. The term blindness is reserved for those persons with total loss of sight; persons who are visually impaired can have various gradations of vision.
Students with visual impairments use many accommodations. These include Braille, cassette tapes, optical scanning devices, readers (paid or volunteer), and voice synthesizing computers. Frequently, blind and visually impaired students rely upon resources from recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic and the Library of Congress.
If you have a blind or visually impaired student in class:
- Provide syllabi in advance, to allow for the taping or Brailling of tests, prior to the beginning of the semester.
- Work with the Office of Accommodative Services and the student to locate readers, note-takers, etc., or team the student with a sighted classmate or laboratory assistant.
- Reserve front-row seats for low vision (and hearing impaired) students. If a guide dog is used, it will be well disciplined and will not create any disruptions in class.
- Face the class when speaking.
- Explain handouts or material on the chalkboard verbally.
- Permit lectures to be tape recorded, or provide copies of lecture notes, where appropriate.
- Provide large-print copies of classroom materials by enlarging them on a photocopier.
- Plan field trips and site visits well in advance to allow sufficient time for accommodation.
- If a task is difficult for a student with a visual disability to complete, consider extending the deadline, or offering an alternative assignment. An alternative task, of equal difficult, would be an appropriate accommodation for a visually impaired or blind student who would be unable to complete the original assignment.
- Students should not be exempted from exams, or expected to master less content, because of visual impairments.
- Allow extra time for exams, with the appropriate testing format (oral, large-print, taped, or Braille), in a quiet setting. Your student will be the best source of ideas regarding alternative testing methods
