Teaching blind student in regular-ed class (music technology)

Hi. I am having major difficulties in planning an efficient lesson plan with regards to sharing my time equally among my students – one of whom is blind. I have been finding it very frustrating during the sessions that involve the use of a computer and music sequencing software. I am finding that at least 60 minutes or more of a 2 hour session is dedicated to the blind student - the reciprocal to this is that the rest of my students are losing out on valuable teaching time. One-to-one overtime is unfortunately not an option!! Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!! Ian Duckett

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Permalink Reply by Christy Tucker on November 2, 2008 at 12:25pm

Would it be possible for you to record audio directions for the blind student for whatever activity you're doing, with the specific keyboard instructions needed? Then you can do your regular lesson while the blind student gets the personal directions that he/she needs through headphones.

If you're walking through actions step by step to show students how to do something, then maybe you can give the mouse directions at the same time as the keyboard directions. Then everyone can go through the actions step by step together. It's hard to tell from your description what kind of lesson you're teaching, but I'm assuming the software has keyboard accessibility so the blind student can use it.

If the software is really entirely inaccessible via keyboard and screen reader, then the answer is that it isn't usable by that blind student. You need to then get an aid in there to do the entry for the student, I suppose, which probably means applying for a grant. But if the software is so inaccessible that the blind student can't use it without someone else doing the entry for him/her, then maybe you need to provide a different activity entirely for that student. This would be similar to whatever alternate lessons you'd provide for Jehovah's Witness students when you sing holiday/patriotic songs. I certainly had those alternates available when I taught music, and I bet you do too.

If my guesses are completely off the mark here, please describe what a lesson typically looks like or what obstacles you're running into. Maybe I can come up with some better ideas--I know this is a shot in the dark based on a guess that you're using Finale or something similar and teaching how to use the software itself for 2 hours at a time.