Modifying an Organic Chemistry Esterification Teaching Lab to be Accessible to Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) Students

Deborah Bromfield Lee, Jarah Nelson

Florida Southern College

There is a consensus in the academic community that educational opportunity on the basis of disability should be equal; however, the implementation of equal opportunity in chemistry laboratory courses is lacking. This is shown in the low amounts of blind and visually impaired (BVI) students pursuing careers in chemistry.  As most laboratory activities rely almost entirely on sight, BVI students feel may unfulfilled and unable to perform chemistry.  Adaptive technology and the implementation of universal design has shown improvement in the learning experience for BVI students, but are not enough work in this area to address the entire Chemistry curriculum. In this project, changes were made to an inquiry-based esterification of isopentyl alcohol and acetic anhydride was modified to be more accessible to BVI students. The modified lab was performed with sighted students to evaluate the changes, and their resulting reports were coded to evaluate the connections they made and the writing about the modifications. This talk with discuss the modifications, observations and future changes.