The value of safety and practicality: Recommendations for training disabled students in the sciences with a focus on blind and visually impaired students in chemistry laboratories

Abstract

We strive to make chemistry more available and exciting for disabled scientists by developing accessible and safe methodologies to be employed by high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. We share philosophies and methods that were found to be effective in ensuring a safe laboratory environment. Namely, an accessible and safe chemistry laboratory requires assistance and extensive contributions from everyone involved. A discussion of technologies that make our computational chemistry laboratory accessible to blind and visually impaired (BVI) researchers follows. These recommendations are derived from our personal experiences with learning and teaching chemistry, with serving on a chemistry accessibility committee and with organizing and running chemistry camps for BVI students. In addition, we have begun work with sighted high school students who perform visual activities under blindfold. These experiences challenge the student under blindfold to learn how to function without all five senses while simultaneously training a sighted peer to safely and accurately assist with non-visual cues.