Country: Greece

Department: Physics, University of Athens

Student:  Blindness. This student needed Assistive Technology that could give him access to educational material and information containing science and math symbols and notation. He was the first blind student that attempted to study Physics in the University of Athens.

Challenges: Helping this student was a challenging task for our staff (working in the Accessibility Unit, University of Athens), as that kind of scientific content could not be read by Screen Readers or translated by Braille Translators, especially in Greek language.

Skills and Strategies: Research was made by our specialists in order to find the best way of transcribing the scientific educational material to an appropriate form that a Screen Reader or Braille Translator could make it accessible to the student. The Nemeth Code of Braille Mathematics and Scientific Notation was used. Additionally, a methodology for producing tactile graphics (like Diagrams, Plots and Book Figures) was developed by our staff. Almost all the educational books were made accessible to this student using the results of this research and methodology. A donation form a private Telecom operator and volunteers contributed to this big effort. The student finished his studies with great success excelling in his degrees. Now he is a postgraduate student in Nuclear Physics.