Research

Explore research in science instruction methods and teaching tools for students who are blind or visually impaired.

Access & Technology: Making Science Accessible to Blind Students, Disability World
http://www.disabilityworld.org/June-July2000/access/Science.html
Marc Krizack describes the work of Dr. Dennis Fantin, a blind biophysicist who developed "a basic set of three-dimensional chemical and biological models to be used as educational aids for blind students enrolled in college courses in the physical and biological sciences."

Books for Blind Scientists: The Technological Requirements of Accessibility, Science Access Project - Oregon State University
http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd/itdv01n4/article8.htm
Three OSU physics professors describe "three new developments that hold great promise for improving the accessibility of scientific literature for people who are visually impaired or who have significant vision-related learning disabilities. All rely on the availability of information in high-level electronic form."

Creating Accessible Math and Science Materials, ATHEN (Access Technologists Higher Education Network)
http://www.athenpro.org/node/40
Ron Stewart describes the collaboration between Science Access Project and Technology Access Project at Oregon State University in "conducting the research and development of a variety of technologies that focus specifically on access to mathematical and hard science content for the print disabled."

The Problem of Accessing Non-Textual Information on the Web, Science Access Project - Oregon State University
http://dots.physics.orst.edu/publications/www6.html
This article examines the creative use of existing "authoring tools and file structures that could make … non-textual information more accessible to people who cannot see or understand visual data, more useful for all users, and more compact than bit-mapped images."

The Quest for Access to Science by People with Print Impairments, Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/feb/gardner.html
John A. Gardner explores some of the barriers and technological innovations in access to science for people with visual impairments.

Using Technology and Other Assistive Strategies To Aid Students with Disabilities in Performing Chemistry Lab Tasks, Journal of Chemical Education
http://144.92.39.64/HS/Journal/Issues/2007/OctACS/ACSSub/p1697.pdf
In this five-page article, Mary Bethé Neely describes a study whose focus "was to determine whether accommodations could be generalized to meet the needs of a larger number of students based on the type of their disabilities while still taking into consideration specific safety issues for each student."