Abstract
Higher education institutions have a constitutional obligation to provide reasonable accommodation to students with disabilities. Although the teaching and learning of students with blindness and low vision in STEM disciplines are well documented abroad, to date, there are no published studies in South Africa on successful teaching and learning strategies for students with blindness and low vision in STEM fields, specifically in science disciplines. Therefore, in this paper, we report on how teaching, learning, and assessment were adapted to make science disciplines accessible to John, a blind student enrolled in a biological sciences degree at a research-intensive university in South Africa. Several factors contributed towards the successful completion of John’s bachelor’s degree. These factors include the availability of tutors who committed a large amount of time to help John understand content presented in lectures, tutorials, and practical sessions; a well-resourced and effective Disability Unit; lecturers who ensured that John was well accommodated in lectures, tutorials, and practical sessions; and, finally, John’s commitment and dedication towards learning.Significance:
 
 This is the first study to report on successful teaching and learning strategies for a blind student in the natural sciences in the South African context.
 The study provides a guide that scholars, educators, university managers and policymakers can use to ensure that mathematics and science subjects are accessible to blind students and that teaching strategies allow them to perform to their potential.
Highlights
The few students with blindness and low vision (BLV) who enrol in STEM disciplines are usually frustrated and lose interest in science-related pursuits mainly because they always have to depend on their sighted peers to conduct laboratory activities, report observations, and interpret or understand visual material.[4]
Special consideration was given to safety, the inexperience of the student and staff to deal with the challenges of the situation and future career prospects for a blind graduate in biology
More than 7 years have passed since we embarked on a journey to train a blind student in biology
Summary
Research has shown that there is an underrepresentation of students with blindness and low vision (BLV) in STEM fields in many countries.[1,2,3] The few students with BLV who enrol in STEM disciplines are usually frustrated and lose interest in science-related pursuits mainly because they always have to depend on their sighted peers to conduct laboratory activities, report observations, and interpret or understand visual material.[4]. The teaching and learning of students with BLV in science disciplines have been well documented abroad.[6,7,8,9,10,11] to date, there are no published studies in the South African context related to the enrolment of BLV students, in science disciplines, and successful strategies for teaching students with BLV in this domain. In this paper, we report on general support and discipline-specific adjustments that were made to teaching, learning facilitation and assessment to make STEM disciplines accessible to a blind student to ensure that he could perform to his full potential. We expect that our experience will make a significant contribution to current knowledge about the training of blind students in STEM disciplines in South African higher education institutions
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