Measures for inclusion: coping with the challenge of visual impairment and blindness in university undergraduate level language learning

Abstract

This paper develops from previous research (Orsini‐Jones et al., 2005) and reports on the experience of three students, two visually impaired and one blind, reading languages at Coventry University, on the adjustments made to meet their needs and on the challenges encountered on their learning journey both from their point of view and from the point of view of the staff involved. It focuses on three students' experience of their languages course and considers the challenges they met in each of their years of study. It concludes by evaluating these students' language learning journey at Coventry University, reporting on their feedback on their experience and on whether or not they feel that staff have successfully catered for their individual needs. It is argued here, as in the previous related work (Orsini‐Jones, et al., 2005) that ‘there still exists some tension between the reasonable anticipatory adjustments that lecturers can put in place and the necessary ad hoc ones that will be needed for a disabled student with very specific needs’.