Accessible Science
We have a moral duty to remove the barriers to participation, and to invest sufficient funding and expertise to unlock the vast potential of people with disabilities...
Although equality is a universal human right, prejudice and perceived disabilities too often exclude people with special needs from many opportunities. Especially active participation in Natural Science is much disrupted.
We decided to challenge this status quo. To have a lasting impact, and due to the complexity of this topic, we had to focus our efforts on the needs of one group of disabled people in particular: Visually impaired people.According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 253 million people worldwide live with vision impairments. 217 million have a moderate to severe visual impairment and 36 million are blind. In Germany, 1.2 million blind people lived in 2002. Of these, 600 live in Marburg and 150 of them are students of the Philipps University.
That is a third of all blind students in Germany!
Marburg has taken many steps to make the city more livable for blind people. You can find talking bus stops and elevators, shopping aids in nearly every supermarket and special rooms in the library of the Philipps University. One of the reasons why Marburg has become this hub for blind people is the BLISTA. It is a nationwide competence center for the blind and visually impaired. It established the first high school for visually impaired students worldwide. Nowadays, this Carl-Strehl-School is the only high school in Europe preparing blind students for higher education. Despite these ideal conditions, visually impaired students are only rarely found in fields like biology or chemistry. We intended to show that anyone believing blind people incapable of doing well in these fields is mistaken.
Therefore, the crucial role in our Human Practices project fell towards public engagement and close cooperation with the BLISTA (engl.: German Institute of the Blind) to facilitate equality and accessibility in Science. In the following paragraphs, you can see for yourself.
In the context of our human practices project, we had the opportunity to visit the chemistry lessons of a 12th grade from the Blista School for pupils with visual impairment. About 15 students were taught about the nomenclature of alkanes. The teacher catered for students with different needs using various methods. One of these methods attracted our attention when we entered the classroom. Every student possesses his or her own laptop. Asking the students, we figured out, that the school is providing laptops for each student. The teachers upload worksheets on their intranet and using their laptops, the students are able to use these worksheets by scaling them up or using a screen reader. Additionally, he printed the worksheets in normal print with a big font size and in braille depending on their individual handicap. Another haptic method is the usage of magnets or models in different shapes, to give the students an idea of atomic bonds and orbitals. Additionally, auditory methods were used to distinguish between different chemicals in tubes.
This is a very difficult task because they, of course, can neither touch the flame nor hear it. Tobias Mahnke showed us how they solved this problem. With a kind of heat formable piece of paper, he is able to emulate the shape of a flame and now the students can feel where the hottest position is.
We were impressed by the different methods of teaching students with visual impairment and could learn many techniques to prepare their visit to our lab. In general, we thought back to our chemistry lessons in school and wished that our teachers also used a variety of methods and not the only visualization by sketches. It would have been a lot easier to imagine and understand the configuration of molecules and other complex topics.
It would be a big win for everyone if there could be more communication and exchange between schools teaching students with special needs and regular schools because both could benefit from each other and learn a lot, as we did during our human practices project.
Since Marburg is known as the “capital for blind people,” the bar Caveau is offering a dinner in the dark named “Finstaverne” (engl.: Sinistavern). Here you get the opportunity to experience one evening in total darkness, enjoying some food and drinks with your friends or colleagues. Compared to other such evenings the only difference is the complete absence of visual impressions. The iGEM Marburg 2018 team used this opportunity to get a feel for how everyday situations, like having a dinner, in the absence of visual impressions is affecting us.
In small groups, a waiter guided us into a room without any light sources. The first challenge was to find your place on the table without pushing anyone or anything. Because we all often rely exclusively on our eyes, the first moments without them were unfamiliar to us. Once we were sitting, we started to wonder, how big the room could be, how many people were there and which team members were sitting on the tables next to us. All these questions we tried to answer by acoustic and haptic clues alone.
Then it was time to order food and drinks. Therefore, most of us had to ask more than once what food selection was available. Some of us decided to order something that could be easier to eat without seeing it rather than soup or spaghetti. They thought eating a sandwich could be more manageable. We realized that eating any kind of food was the key challenge of this evening for most members of our team. The ones who ordered sandwiches were wondering how they lost all the toppings while eating.
After several hours, it was time to leave. Here comes the last challenge of this evening. How to pay without knowing how much money you have in your hands?
Some Members were well prepared and assorted the money bills in their wallet, beforehand. Most of us did not think about that before entering the dark room and had to guess if they had picked the right bills and coins. Fortunately, the waiters were very kind and trustworthy. Being more experienced than us they were kind enough to help us with the payment.
We had a lot of fun and enjoyed our dinner on that evening. At the same time, it was impressive how you experience basic things like your food and drinks differently, if your only judge is what you feel, smell or taste. Your perception of a bar changes if you cannot see all the people around you and are limited to hear a lot of voices and conversations mixing from different directions.
It was difficult to adapt to this new situation but we all managed to eat, drink and to pay. However, this experience gave us a small insight into challenges for the visually impaired. Although we know that this experience is not equivalent to real everyday situations for people with visual impairment, it still gave us an idea of the challenges some people have overcome day by day.
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”
Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of HTML and founder of the World Wide Web)
Accessibility in science does not end at providing a barrier-free lab. When getting into contact with Victor Kratz one of the topics we discussed was accessibility in the digital space. In the past years globalization and digitalization have shaped the world as we know it. Globalization is accelerated by digitalization and the internet is more important than ever before. The web has the ability to work for all people regardless of language, location, gender, age, income or ability. It removes barriers in communication and interaction that many people with disabilities face in the physical world. Yet, badly designed websites and applications can create barriers which lead to the exclusion of possible users. At this point in time e.g. a lot people with visual impairment need to adjust web pages to make them accessible to them. Barrier-free web design provides accessibility to all people regardless of ability or interface. In our conversation with Victor Kratz he mentioned that a lot of websites still are not suited to be accessed via a screen reader.
As scientist, we use the web a lot basically everyday nowadays. We’re having access to scientific publication, are doing bioinformatic analysis and can order e.g. oligos through online shops from science companies. It generally plays a huge role. Because of this, it is crucial to provide access to all those applications to everyone regardless of their abilities. A huge part of iGEM is the presentation of our work. We hold presentations, make posters and design a wiki. Habitually, we should always ask ourselves this one question: Is everyone able to access the data I’m presenting? We decided to design our wiki in an accessible manner to tackle this question. Through this, we aim to make the results of the iGEM competition accessible to everyone. And by this taking a step towards a more inclusive scientific community.
But how do you design an accessible wiki? We did some research and put together a guide for you!
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Navigation
Many users rely on a keyboard for navigation. All elements of your wiki should be accessible when using only a keyboard as the navigation device. This means that you can focus on every relevant elements using the Tab key. -
Colour and Contrast
A high contrast between background and e.g. text should be used. This is especially important for buttons and symbols since they can’t be modified by the user. Additionally, red and green should not be used as contrasting colours since people with colour blindness can’t distinguish between those two colours. Additionally, for symbols and buttons, use a combination of colour, shape and text instead of only using colour to distinguish
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Scalability
Font sizes, distances,areas etc. should be set relatively so that they can be adjusted. This can be achieved by using % or em as units instead of pt or px.Distances should not be created using transparent pictures. Instead, distances should be formatted using HTML or CSS.
Don't:
body {font-size: 14px}
body {font-size: 14pt}
Do:
body {font-size: 14%}
body {font-size: 14em}
Don't:
Do:
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Headers
Headings should be defined as headings instead of defining them as . Heading should be descriptive. Instead of “Welcome”, your heading should contain important search keys.
Don't:
Do:
…
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Lists
List should be formatted as lists instead of using wordwraps and hyphens.
Don't:
List
...
Do:
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Text
Color or font style should not be used as the sole distinctive feature. Instead use e.g. bold styles to let it stand apart.Animated text can also cause problems and should be described by an alternative text in the source code. (See Figures and Videos)
Don't:
This is a text in which this word is important.
This is a text in which this word is important.
Do:
This is a text in which this word is important. -
Frames
Information that belongs together like navigation and content should always be shown in one frame. Otherwise, users have to switch between those frames. Frames should be named with titles like “navigation” or “content” for better orientation. -
Figures, Videos and Audio
Don’t only convey information using images, audio or videos. To better accommodate people using a screen reader, it is possible to add an alternative text to the source code of figures. By this, the screen reader reads the alternative tags instead of reading the filename you uploaded. This is crucial for obtaining information about the graphic.If graphics do not convey any information and their sole purpose is to accessorize the website you should still put a blank alt tag in the source code. By this the screen reader skips this graphic. Without any alt tag, it would read the filename.
It is possible to check for accessibility of your wiki. In the settings of most browsers, graphics can be turned off. Image Maps should not be used, as they are only accessible using a computer mouse.
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Tables
Tables should be arranged, so that they can be read row for row from left to right. Additionally, a description containing a summary that is not shown but can be read using a screen reader is helpful for understanding the content. -
Links
Links to other sites should be in form of a descriptive text instead of non-descriptive links, such as “click here”. If a graphic is used as a link symbol, the alternative text in the source code should point to the information the link leads to. External links should be labeled.
Don't:
Do: