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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.