As a blind student, you've probably developed an ability to get around school grounds, a relationship with teachers and counselors, and good methods for obtaining accessible class materials (text books, handouts, material shown on overhead projectors or written on blackboards). Although your current skills will certainly be useful in college and the work force beyond, they will probably need to be further adapted in order for you to remain successful. The size of your school grounds (campus), class sizes, and student to teacher (faculty and staff) ratios are about to get bigger. The "most people know me" factor, and comfort due to familiarity are about to get smaller. What follows are experiences, observations, and suggestions which I hope will make your transition more seamless.
AN important distinction for everyone to make, is the difference between what you (the blind individual) and your family and friends want. Presumably as life goes on there will be differences in what you want vs. say, what your parents would like you to have. Safety and security are often perceived as synonymous with only getting help from a select group of people (mom and dad). Eventually most realize that this is inconvenient for you as well as the select number of people involved - while family may feel better about you or themselves as your primary helpers, and it may seem like the easiest thing for you to do is to wait for their availability and do things their way, choices and diversity in your life will "set you free." Initially the easiest way to do something is the way which utilizes already established methods of assistance, however after a little breaking away from the proverbial nest, one typically realizes a new kind of independents which is much preferred. The message here is definitely not "break away from family and do absolutely everything by yourself with out assistance," but is more "realize the alternatives and find your own voice if you haven't already."
Hopefully your living model will be changing significantly over some period of time. You will no longer be living at home, and assistance from friends and family may not be as ideal as it once was. Living more on your own (perhaps on campus with a room mate, or in an off campus apartment) means that you will need to consider:
You'll want to decide which classes you will be taking as soon as possible, to allow plenty of time for other preparations (discussed below). Although some advisers highly recommend you take a specific schedule of classes in order to stay on track for graduation by a certain date, this becomes pointless if you're not going to be very successful because your class load is to much, or there are too many time consuming preparations for classes. Make sure to be optimistic yet smart about what classes you sign up for. Remember that you can typically drop a class during the first few weeks if it seems like the class will be to much.
It's hard to do well in class if you can't get there. It's an excellent idea to familiarize yourself with the areas of campus you'll use before hand, but don't worry about learning every inch of campus all at once. You'll need to have an almost certain idea of which classes you'll be taking, or at least which buildings you will be likely to attend classes in. Finding someone to walk with you to your classes can be an attractive prospect,although this can evolve into a crutch that's unnecessarily restrictive for you and the person walking with you.
Before you can get your books in some format which is accessible, you need to know what books will be used by the courses you will be taking. Call or visit your university's book store to get a list of the books your courses will be using. Be sure to have the necessary course identifiers handy, not just names like "that beginning sociology course." Often courses have multiple sections (meeting times) which are not all taught by the same professor - it's possible that different sections use slightly different books.
Sometimes professors are undecided about whether they want to continue using the book they have used for the past 5 years, or try a new book and update their curriculum. If a professor has not informed the book store which books they will be using, you probably want to try contacting the professor and inquire on your own. The trick is to be nice about it, even if you are stressed bout getting the book in time:
Hello professor Johnson, my name is Ivan Fetch and I'll be taking
your introduction to Sociology class this coming semester. I was
wondering whether I might find out which books you will be using for the
course so that I may begin getting them in an accessible format?
If the professor is still undecided about which books they want to use,. you may be able to get enough information from them to solve your problem. Perhaps they are trying to decide whether to use the second or third edition of a book, and you can ask whether you might be able to go ahead and use the second edition (this at least gives you something to work with). You may also look for assistance through your university's office for students with disabilities as they may have a relationship with the department or professor involved.
If you got the majority of your elementary, middle, and high school books on tape through services like Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, or in braille from places like National Braille Press, it's possible that you won't have as much luck finding your college textbooks because there is a much greater diversity when it comes to college curriculum vs. that of kindergarten through high school. Sometimes you can get away with using an earlier edition of a textbook (consult your professor before doing this), but it's usually a good idea to make sure you have a print copy of that earlier edition available in case you need assistance matching chapters in your edition with chapters in the later edition which the rest of the class is using. A university's disabilities office may have the ability to put a text book on tape or in braille for you, but this is a time consuming and costly process for the disabilities office, and you may not be doing much reading ahead because there are only so many resources available.
Another alternative to books on tape or in braille is reading an electronic copy of a book using a computer. Electronic copies of books may sometimes be obtained directly from the publisher, or can be created by using a scanner to scan the book and convert the scanned image into readable text. If you are apprehensive about jumping into using electronic copies of books, you may want to start by using an electronic book for a course which you already have some background in, or using an electronic book in conjunction with a copy of the book on tape as a fall back.
If you will be scanning text books, it's important to factor in the time and effort involved in scanning and potentially having errors in the scanned text corrected. You want to be sure that after the chapters you need for this week are scanned, you've still got time to actually read them. If you'll be answering questions out of a book for homework, you want to make sure that the questions were scanned properly (an incorrect number or misplaced symbol in a math problem makes all the difference). It's often easiest to prearrange sighted help (perhaps from your university's disabilities office) for correcting text involving numerics and symbols.
It's often realized to late that a book converted to tape, braille, or electronic format by a disabilities office or friend is still not accessible to you. This might make you not want to use the book, and is wasting the time of whom ever is converting it for you - if the class is half over, saving graces can seem impossible. Therefore it's important to communicate with the individuals doing the conversion work. If taped material is read at an undesirable Pace, or braille formatting is not what you expect, you'd rather find out sooner than later and correct the problem before a significant about of work has been done on the book. IF technical material such as mathematics or programming is not properly represented, you will naturally have a more difficult time learning from the book (you probably won't know if it's accurate until you've learned it, so consultation with a professor or knowledgeable tutor may be necessary). Discussing portrayal of difficult charts or graphs in advance can save valuable time - often most charts and graphs are more easily understood when represented in a slightly altered way (such as reading a bar graph in terms of "name=value" pairs instead of reading each axis). IF you can eliminate significant portions of a book which you know will not be used, (maybe only 50 out of 300 exercises per chapter will be assigned for homework), the conversion process can move even faster.
While this kind of prior planning and discussing takes time and effort, it's much preferred to a converted book which is not really accessible to you. Try to get some sample material from the individual(s) who will be converting your books for you, and meet with them on a regular basis to develop a relationship for how you like things represented.
Here are some common questions and statements, with responses of course. IF you have something you think should be added or a comment to make about this document, please email webmaster@ivanfetch.com.
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Document Last Modified:
Friday, March 05, 2010