(188b) Increasing Accessibility for Visually Impaired STEM Students through a New Design and Rapid Prototyping Course

Blind and visually impaired (VI) students often struggle to understand STEM concepts due to a lack of available teaching materials. Commonly, K-16 STEM lessons are presented using images, videos, graphs, and visual demonstrations. However, these traditional visual methods are unable to reach VI students, and STEM instructors who do not have experience teaching VI students struggle to convey ideas in a relatable way. To address the lack of educational aids for VI students, we have developed a new design and prototyping elective for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students within Chemical Engineering departments. In the new course, university students use computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D printing to produce educational models specifically for grade 9-12 VI students in STEM classrooms. Models are designed specifically to provide tactile cues to understand difficult STEM concepts and to be used completely without the need for vision. With feedback from the high school science instructor at the Kentucky School for the Blind (KSB), students at the University of Louisville worked throughout Spring 2022 to iteratively design and improve models for grade 9-12 classrooms. The university course curriculum covers not only the skills needed to design and produce models (e.g., CAD, 3D printing, polymer science, polymer processing) but also gives the students a deeper understanding of the need to consider accessibility and inclusion in their designs and in their careers.

In the inaugural year of the course, thirteen university students were enrolled, ranging from juniors to Ph.D. students and representing three engineering departments. The university students worked both individually and in teams to produce educational models covering STEM concepts from the state’s K-12 academic standards. In total, seventeen designs were produced to aid in instruction of blind and VI students at KSB. Major concepts covered with these models include but are not limited to trends in electronegativity and atomic radii on the periodic table, dominant and recessive heritability, plant life cycles, DNA structure, layers of the earth, electromagnetism, and the central limit theorem. Students have chosen to upload their CAD models for free to public repositories to allow for STEM instructors across the world to benefit from their efforts. We are in the process of compiling tutorials and guides for K-12 instructors to 3D print these models for their own classrooms. To replicate this course at other universities, the cost of equipment and materials is about $2000 for a class of 10-20 university students, which makes the project accessible to all engineering departments. The course curriculum, tutorials, and suggestions for integrating the models into the K-12 curriculum will be provided online for free. Importantly, the course concept can be easily replicated, modified, and improved to address the needs of students outside grades 9-12, students outside STEM disciplines, and students with other special learning needs.