Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) were created to allow people who have difficulty hearing or speaking on the telephone to communicate with voice telephone users. Under Title IV of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) [1], each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and all of the U.S. territories must provide free relay services.
My name is Nana. I'm a second-year student at a small, private four-year engineering/technical college, with engineering as my major. I have quadriplegia and use a power wheelchair for mobility. I have enough use of my hands to write and use a standard computer keyboard and mouse.
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.
My name is Rick and I am legally blind. I use Braille or a screen reader on a computer to access printed or electronic information. This quarter, one of my sociology courses has a number of required articles on electronic library reserve.
When I opened the electronic documents, my screen reader could not read them. The format was incompatible with my screen reading software, and I was therefore unable to access the library reserve articles.
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.
Making wise choices of what to study in high school and college is one of the important considerations for all students. Having a disability simply adds extra considerations to decisions. Below are a few of the many resources to help students with disabilities prepare for careers.
Guidance from high school and college career counselors can be helpful. Most can guide students to information on many aspects of a career choice, from the nature of the work involved to required skills and education to forecasts of job availability and salary expectations.