AccessSTEM

While there are no specific time lines, some professionals recommend that students be re-evaluated at least every three years or whenever there is going to be a "significant change in placement." The campus 504 committee should reconsider the student's plan every year to make sure that his or her accommodation plan is appropriate, based on their current schedule and individual student needs. The accommodation plan may be revised during the school year if needed.

Background

My name is Imke. I am a blind graduate student in atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. I use a refreshable Braille display to access text that appears on a computer screen.

Access Issue

Some data I use for my research are available on the web page of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO). The site includes plots of various climate indices that are not accessible to me, since neither refreshable Braille displays nor speech synthesizers are capable of reproducing graphics.

Each October during National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) works with the Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy to promote Disability Mentoring Day (DMD).

According to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, National Science Foundation (NSF), the data available on people with disabilities in science and engineering is seriously limited for the following reasons.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is located within the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, is the federal entity charged with collecting and analyzing data related to education.

Research has shown that people with disabilities achieve at lower levels in education and employment when compared to their peers without disabilities. Below are some sources that have compiled some of these statistics.

The World Wide Web provides a great source for locating summer camps in your corner of the world. Using a search engine, you can search for items like "summer camp for kids with disabilities" or "accessible summer camps" and be provided with myriad options.

AD/HD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) is characterized by hyperactivity, impulsivity, and/or inattention. ADD (Attention-Deficit Disorder) and ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are terms for conditions now included within the diagnosis of AD/HD, which is divided into three subtypes:

• AD/HD Predominantly Inattentive Type
• AD/HD Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive Type
• AD/HD Predominantly Combined Type

Symptoms of inattention include the following:

MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) is an industry standard adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as the approved way of expressing math on the web. Like the more familiar HyperText Markup Language (HTML), which sets the standard for web browsers to display literary text, MathML is an international open standard for encoding math content. MathML is needed because HTML has no means of marking up mathematical expressions. Using MathML provides the highest level of accessibility to math within digital documents.

Some common challenges faced by learners with Dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects performance in mathematics include: