Teaching Visually Impaired College Students in Introductory Statistics

Instructors of postsecondary classes in statistics rely heavily on visuals in their teaching, both within the classroom and in resources like textbooks, handouts, and software, but this information is often inaccessible to students who are blind or visually impaired (BVI). The unique challenges invo...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Brian W. Stone, Donovan Kay, Anthony Reynolds
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2019-09-01
Series:Journal of Statistics Education
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10691898.2019.1677199
Description
Summary:Instructors of postsecondary classes in statistics rely heavily on visuals in their teaching, both within the classroom and in resources like textbooks, handouts, and software, but this information is often inaccessible to students who are blind or visually impaired (BVI). The unique challenges involved in adapting both pedagogy and course materials to accommodate a BVI student may provoke anxiety among instructors teaching a BVI student for the first time, and instructors may end up feeling unprepared or “reinventing the wheel.” We discuss a wide variety of accommodations inside and outside of the classroom grounded in the empirical literature on cognition and learning and informed by our own experience teaching a blind student in an introductory statistics course.
ISSN:1069-1898