Making chemistry accessible for people with vision impairment

There are 28,900 children in the UK living with severe sight loss. Many of these children attend mainstream schools, where they often have difficulty accessing and learning scientific content. This is particularly apparent in practical activities, where pupils with vision impairment (VI) are often excluded from participating because the experiments rely entirely on visual observations.

As a result, pupils with VI miss out on learning important life skills, including critical thinking and problem solving.  Furthermore, they often fall behind in their educational attainment, which is strongly linked to further education and employment success. In the School of Chemistry, we are developing experiments and activities that make chemistry accessible for people with VI. Join us for a hands-on seminar where we will showcase our work in this area, including tactile and olfactory chromatography and accessible battery models. (Speakers: Zoe Schnepp, Rachel Chataway-Green, Peter Slater and Lizzie Driscoll).

This talk is open to everyone interested in inclusive education, from the School of Chemistry and the wider University. It may be of particular interest to those leading or supporting laboratory teaching or outreach.