Physics and Potential Barriers

This is an initiative to make physics accessible to blind students on the university level. Stay tuned for our first manuscript in that direction.

Personal View:

Inaccessibility of knowledge in STEM fields on the college and university levels is the main obstacle for students with disabilities to get college degrees in those fields. It is ironic that certain class of people are said to have disabilities due to some physical characteristics. It is ironic because

1. everyone on the planet has a disability of one form or another (for example many of us wear glasses)
2. the definition of disability should also be applied to the system itself and immediately one can see that standard educational systems on the post-secondary levels (colleges and universities) are not robust enough to accommodate people with different abilities and needs.

Humanity is facing current and future challenges that need as much mental power as possible from the society to solve them. Many of these challenges are subtle that they require input from people with diverse background and abilities who came from different paths of life and who have faced different kinds of challenges. Considerable fraction of this mental power is latent in the society because of the inaccessibility of knowledge to certain class of people.

STEM courses and programs need to be inclusive and accessible for students with disabilities different needs and abilities. Mobility, hearing, or visual impairment should not be barriers to learning. We, the STEM community in general and the Physics community in particular, owe this to the society and to future generations.