Making Accommodations

Welcome. Today Anita is going to talk about accommodations. An accommodation is when an activity is modified or accomplished in an alternative way so that a person with a disability, such as blindness, can be included  in it. For example, say the activity is viewing a microscope slide. The accommodation might be to have a person orally describe what he is seeing on the slide. Hopefully, the person who is blind knows guiding questions to ask that can provide him with the type of description required for him to come away from the activity with the same information as people with vision do. Another way to accommodate for this activity might be to have a tactile model that simulates what the student would see under the microscope, great for understanding the concept, but not the same as observing it oneself.

Another example of providing an accommodation for an activity, say riding a bike, might be to use a tandem bike, a bike that holds two riders. Yet another might be for the rider with vision problems to ride the bike at a time of day when his vision allows him to see the contrast between the road and the grass. When we were kids, my brother and I used to ride our bikes at dusk because that is when we could tell the lighter sidewalk from the darker grass in front of our house. But, this would not work in gym class because we were not as familiar with the area and because it was too bright during the day for us to see.

What about accessing the Bible in church? An accommodation could be accomplished by listening to the pastor read the passage aloud, by using an electronic notetaker with a refreshable braille display, a device similar to a PDA, to quickly navigate to the various books of the Bible, or to simply write down notes of the verses and look them up later on at home in a hardcopy braille Bible.

As you can see, some accommodations are simply alternative, yet effective, ways of accomplishing the activity; other accommodations replace the activity with something different or provide the person who is blind with a less quality experience.

There are more people with vision in our world than there are without vision. People who are blind need to make themselves act and appear as people who are sighted in order to fit in and to be thought of as capable. Also, because it is a world designed for the sighted person, activities and products are designed to be accomplished and/or used in a visual manner. It isn't that people who are blind are less capable; it is that alternative sensory input is not as likely to be considered for activities and products, and thus, an accommodation is likely to be required, though not always provided. Some activities or products are either accidentally accessible or easily made accessible. For example, the 5 key on a TV remote or keypad with physical buttons generally has a raised bump on it, making it easy to locate without the use of vision. A BOPIT game audibly calls out commands, and it is easy to distinguish the twist it from the spin it, pull it, or flip it controls. It does call out colors, but after trial and error or asking someone with vision, these colors can easily be memorized. Other such games in the regular market include Simon, Jinga, Mancala, and more. However, many products are not accessible, especially those that have menu systems, and this makes them unusable by someone without vision. When I bought my crockpot, my air fryer, and my washer and dryer, I made sure they did not include menu systems. Some are easily made accessible, for example, the timer on the air fryer is not accessible, but I choose to use my phone's timer. However, I could mark it with bump dots or braille, as I do other appliances.

Apple has designed their products with accessibility in mind. A free screenreader called VOICEOver comes preinstalled with Apple products as do other accessibility features. Not all apps are accessible because, again, the designers do not plan for accessibility when they create their product. A great way to find out if an app is accessible is to visit www.applevis.com and search for it. Blind and low vision users use this site to share and find accessible apps.

There are two ways to handle accommodations. One is to focus on making an activity accessible by providing the accommodations for that specific activity; the other is to build accessibility into the activity or product at its inception and also to insure that the person who is blind learns alternative techniques and advocacy skills and embraces a positive blindness philosophy. The difference between the two is that the first focuses on making the activity accessible for an individual; the second focuses on performing activities in different ways using various senses so that the widest possible audience is able to access the activity or product. Remember a technique is referred to as alternative because it is different from the "normal" way of using vision to accomplish a given task. Vision should be one method for accessing the information, but not the only method. Now that we've defined how these two ways of providing accommodations are different, let's look at an example.

In a Math class, if one focuses on providing a graph in an accessible format by having someone to describe the graph, then one is focusing on the activity. Sometimes, a less quality technique is used in such cases, for example, maybe the student is not an auditory learner, and thus, he cannot visualize the map or understand the information as easily when provided the audio description. Or maybe the student who is helping to provide the audio description does not  know the correct terminology to use or how to accurately verbalize what he is seeing. If accessibility is  provided for the widest possible audience in mind, then the Math book is provided in various formats, such as an audio format and a braille format with  tactile graphs included at the same moment students with vision receive their print version of the book. Then the student who is blind can tactually discern the graph while the student with vision can visually discern the graph.

At a blindness training center, the focus is on teaching blindness skills. Also, all students are blind and can learn from each other and share ideas. Therefore, students with blindness and low vision are  more likely to focus on learning alternative techniques, and thus, will be more able to develop the knowledge and advocacy skills to be included within society.

Thank you for being with us today. Learning to make accommodations in a sighted world can be a challenge, but it can also teach your brain how to improvise. Take a quick look around you. Can you think of ways to make accommodations for yourself? How about accommodations for those with other disabilities besides blindness?

Feel free to leave us a comment. We would love to hear your thoughts. Until next time, take care and remember we’re all in this together.

Be blessed.