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.
Our hometown Marburg is known as “the capital of blind people” but visually impaired students can only rarely be found in fields like biology or chemistry. What could be the reasons for this? We used the opportunity to talk to Dr. Brandis-Heep, the dean of students in the department of biology. Our first question was, if there are biology students with visual impairment in our department.
Dr. Brandis Heep: “From time to time there are students with visual impairment in the department of biology. The practical work in the lab is more challenging for them. “
iGEM Marburg 2018: “Are there special Lab spaces for students with special needs? How do they manage to do the practical work?”
Dr. Brandis Heep: “Usually they do not need special workspace because all our lab courses are done in groups of two or more students. The big advantage is that students can help each other. This would not be possible if students have to pass the courses alone.”
iGEM Marburg 2018: ”Are there special safety instructions for students with visual impairment?”
Dr. Brandis Heep: “No, they should be able to follow the same safety instructions as other students to work in the lab.”
iGEM Marburg 2018: ”Are students with handicap allowed to provide a replacement if they are not able to complete a course?”
Dr. Brandis Heep: “In our department, every student is free in choosing the courses and lectures he or she wants to take. Students with handicap can choose the lectures and courses they want and do not need to provide replacements. In a few exceptions, students have to pass a certain course but this was never a barrier since you can pass these courses in groups.”
iGEM Marburg 2018: ”Are there special features that must be taken into account during the application procedure for students with visual impairment?
Dr. Brandis Heep: “The application procedure is the same but in our experience the students get in touch with us before the lectures start and talk about their disability. This gives us the opportunity to do preparations for individual students. For example, the lecturer can give them the PowerPoint slides, so they can follow the lecture on their laptops.”
The fact, that some students with visual impairment successfully completed their biology studies has strengthen our motivation to bring science closer to pupils of the Blista School. In a conversation with a student of the Blista School, he told us that he sometimes thinks about breaking up the high school diploma because he thought there was no way for him to study biology. He told us that he is very interested in science and especially in microbiology. However, after we told him about our conversation with Dr. Brandis-Heep and he had worked with us in the lab for one day (Click here for more information on our Open Laboratory Days), he gained new courage, that graduating and finding a job in this field is possible for him. It made us very happy that we were able to show people new ways to realize their dream. We are very thankful that Dr. Brandis-Heep gave us the opportunity to ask these questions and supported us with our human practices project.
In context of our human practices project, we had the opportunity to visit the chemistry lessons of a 12th grade from the Blista School for pupil 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.
After the lesson, we had some time to talk to the teacher and he confronted us with a very interesting question: “How do you explain a blind student how a flame looks and behaves like?”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.
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. Barrier-free web design provides accessibility to all people regardless of ability or interface. At this point in time a lot people with vision impairment need to adjust web pages to make them accessible to them.
Taking information from our blind interviewee and computational biologist Viktor we investigated the possibility for a more accessible iGEM Wiki as part of our Integrated Human Practices project. We also reached out to fellow iGEM Teams to collaborate with us in order to present their results on their wiki in a way that is accessible to people with disabilities. Through this, we aim to make the amazing results of the iGEM competition accessible to everyone.
