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Students with blindness and vision impairments are significantly under-represented in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) content areas. Dr. Cary Supalo, who is totally blind, will discuss how he obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University and what accessibility tricks he leveraged along the way that made significant contributions to his success. This presentation will also discuss methodologies and best practices for how access technology can be used to provide non-visual access to students who are blind or vision impaired in the STEM fields of study. The use of braille, tactile graphics, text-to-speech screen reader and refreshable braille technologies will also be illustrated. A series of low-tech solutions will also be presented thus further showing how high and low tech solutions can be leveraged in a synergistic way to make STEM content accessible to a blind student.

Cary Supalo is a Research Developer at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, New Jersey, where he works as a member of the Accessibility Standards and Inclusive Technology team to conduct educational research and usability studies on the accessibility of new computer adapted high stakes assessments in K12 and higher education.