The Gill Advanced Learning Laboratory (GALL) at Lamar University provides a unique science learning environment for students with disabilities. It is funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Research in Disabilities Education (RDE) program.
Disability-related issues can be easily integrated into many areas of study. The Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies (CHPLDS) website, contains a vast selection of materials and resources to help educators integrate disability studies into social studies, history, literature, and related subjects.
Many articles on how students with disabilities can fully participate in academic studies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have been published over the years. EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) has put together a collection of those that have been published in the journal Information Technology and Disabilities. The collection can be found at EASI's Accessible STEM Content page.
Classroom, state accountability, and other math assessments are typically designed for a student who can use a pencil and paper. When the test administration is inaccessible to a student with a disability, reasonable accommodations will need to be provided to afford equal access to the instrument. For example, a person could record answers for a student who cannot do so independently.
My name is Marika and I'm a math major in college. I'm visually impaired. I can read large print but have trouble seeing the content on a computer screen, especially when the lighting is poor. For the most part, I am able to read large-print text without any problems.
There are a number of valuable resources about making math accessible available on the web. Here are a few places to look:
Interactions with your peers can reinforce your classroom learning, help you persist to graduation, and make your college experience more satisfying (Pascarella, E.T., & Terenzini, P. T. 2005. How College Affects Students: A Third Decade of Research. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco). A group of students working together to advocate for increased accessibility on campus can also be more effective than a student advocating alone.
My name is Imke. I am a blind graduate student in atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. I use a refreshable Braille display to access text that appears on a computer screen.
Some data I use for my research are available on the web page of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO). The site includes plots of various climate indices that are not accessible to me, since neither refreshable Braille displays nor speech synthesizers are capable of reproducing graphics.
The World Institute on Disability (WID) is an international nonprofit center on public policy that focuses on researching disability issues and overcoming barriers to independent living for people with disabilities.
The Trace Center has prepared a document, A Brief Introduction to Disabilities, that discusses major disability groups and some specific barriers to accessibility they encounter. This online publication describes specific access issues related to visual impairments, hearing impairments, physical impairments, cognitive/language impairments, seizure disorders, and multiple impairments.