Visually Impaired Students

In todays’ world, technology is very important factor affecting our social and educational life. Access to computers and the World Wide Web is increasingly required for education and employment as well as for many activities of daily living (Chiang, Cole, Gupta, Kaiser, & Starren. 2005). Advances in educational technologies make also teaching and learning environment easier and leading to deeper understanding of the concepts for both learner and teacher especially in mathematics education. While computer-assisted instruction has been well-developed and used successfully with regular children, there have not been many efforts to adapt it to the special needs of handicapped students. Thus, it was found that there was also a need to develop

He adopted from a South Korean orphanage when he was three years old, Battles went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and master’s degree in computer science from Pennsylvania State University. (Jackson, 2002) According to the visually impaired students’ descriptions, they are trying to complete a puzzle that they have never seen. As a result, the expectations for students with disabilities were lower than the expectations from the other students (Levy, 2008). Moreover, from my observations, I realized that visually impaired students have difficulties in learning mathematical subjects in high school because of poorly designed educational environments and insufficient preparation of teachers. In the past experience, my visually impaired students told me that they can never learn mathematical concepts in secondary education and they did not believe that they would achieve it because of their disability. In contrast to those who believe mathematics requires a certain level of innate ability, research shows that everyone can learn mathematics; however, not necessarily under the same conditions or with the same

İ. (2014). Exploring the academic and social challenges of visually impaired students in learning high school mathematics. The graduate school of Education Bilkent University, Ankara.

Belcastro, P. (2006). Computers and students and adults who are impaired. Norteast Iowa Community College, Mississippi.

Bülbül, M. Ş. (2014). The Effect of enriched course materials about motion on nineth grade sighted and totally blind students’ achievement, motivation, attitude, perception of learning environment and interaction in inclusive classes. The Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciencec Middle East Technical University, Ankara.

Chiang, M., Cole, R., Gupta, S., Kaiser, G., & Starren, J. (2005). Computer and World Wide Web accessibility by visually disabled patients: problems and solutions. Survey of Ophthalmology, 50(4), 394-405.

Jackson, A. (2002). The World of Blind Mathematicians. Notices of the AMS, 49(10), 1246- 1251. [Online]:Retrieved on 16-Otober-2011, at URL: www.ams.org/notices/200210/comm-morin.pdf. Journal of Educational Technology and Society. (SSCI indexed), (2016, January), Call for papers special issue on: ‘Technology support for fostering life-long learning of learners with disabilities [Announcement]. United States, DC: Author. Retrieved November 1, 2014 from the World Wide Web: