Blind students face extra challenges staying in college computing majors
"Coder first, advocate second, college student third": The Liminality of Going to College as a Blind Computing Student
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
College is harder to finish for blind or low vision students studying computing because they face many barriers. The paper reports interviews with 10 blind college students who said they often have to spend extra time advocating for their accessibility needs in addition to learning coding. Some students drop out or end up focusing more on advocacy than coding. The researchers suggest that this college transition period is key for finding better support and technology that can help blind students succeed.
What this means in practice
- •For college disability services teams: Identify digital and acclimation challenges blind computing students face at college entry to improve support programs and accessibility accommodations.
- •For educational technology developers: Develop tools that reduce accessibility burdens on blind students during college transitions to help keep them focused on coding instead of advocacy.
Authors
Isabela Figueira, Josahandi M. Cisneros, Stacy M. Branham
Abstract
Blind or low vision (BLV) students are less likely to graduate from college, particularly in computing. Prior work documents accessibility challenges in high school and college, but we lack understanding of the transition process that produces this "leaky pipeline." To address this, we interviewed ten BLV college students about going to college to study computing. We analyzed our data through the lens of life transition, specifically Intersecting Liminality. Our findings reveal that some BLV students face such immense digital accessibility and college acclimation barriers that the only way forward as coders is to take on a "second job" as a blind advocate or drop out of the computing major. We argue that the college transition is a critical point for analysis and technological intervention, and further, that Intersecting Liminality provides a useful lens for HCI scholars to unpack the compounding challenges that prevent some BLV students from completing computing degrees.