Teaching Science subjects to Blind Students

Access to the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) for blind and vision impaired people continues to be a problem. The inherently visual nature of much of the material found in these areas is neither easily or readily accessible using the linear representations in common usage by this community. This paper proposes methodologies for depicting visually complex data in a non-visual manner. It will be shown how, through the prosodic component found in spoken language, the structure of mathematical formulae may be disambiguated. The use of haptic technology will also be discussed in relation to its role in depicting diagrammatic material.