Students with blindness or low vision (BLV) often face bias in the world of science, especially chemistry. Chemistry is often viewed as “too dangerous” for them, leading to exclusion from the lab and impeding understanding in other areas of STEM. By making data and tools in the chemistry lab accessible to people with BLV, we hope to include them in the sciences and aid in their chemical understanding.
To begin, in the fall of 2022, we launched our first outreach event with the students from the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI). This event spanned a total of three days, with one day of us teaching the students down at TSBVI, and two days of the students in the lab here at Baylor. In this event, we began making labs at Baylor completely accessible to those with BLV. We began with covering a basic organic chemistry reaction, esterification, and with electron microscopy. Upon completion of this program, students felt an increase in inclusion in the sciences, especially in chemistry.
