Students With Visual Impairments Empowered to Explore Chemistry Through SEPA Project

Dr. Shaw (back left) observes SEPA program students engaging with tactile graphics in his lab. Credit: Jordan Koone Students with blindness and low vision are often excluded from chemistry labs and offered few accessible representations of the subject’s imagery, which can significantly hinder their ability to learn about and participate in chemistry. Bryan Shaw, Ph.D., a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, hopes to change that through a program funded by an NIGMS Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA). His inspiration to start the program came from his son, who is visually impaired due to childhood eye cancer, and his son’s friends who have also experienced partial or complete vision loss. “Chemistry focuses on dreaming up assistive technologies to help us visualize particles and structures too small to see with our eyes. The field is actually well equipped to make itself accessible because all it’s ever been is trying to understand things we can’t see,” Dr. Shaw says. Experiencing Chemistry Firsthand The SEPA program, which is a collaboration between Baylor and the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI), has created 3-day research experiences for high schoolers with blindness and low vision. The first research experience, held in October 2022, was split into two parts. In the first, Dr. Shaw, three of his graduate students, and three chemists with blindness who serve as mentors (Matthew...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Being a Scientist Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology STEM Education Uncategorized Training Source Type: blogs