It’s an unfortunate fact of life that when the subject of disability comes up, conversation often turns to what can’t be accomplished. There are plenty of things you can do, the well-meaning teacher or employer might say; just not that one thing. And from such attitudes come low expectations.  

Taking high school chemistry is among the things that a lot of blind and visually impaired people are told they can’t do. You need to observe changes in color or be able to draw a molecule, right? And if you can’t take chemistry – the so-called “central science” – what are the chances you will be able to pursue a career in science, if that’s what you want to do?

Earlier this month, I went to visit Dr. Bryan Shaw, a chemistry professor at Baylor University. Shaw wants to make chemistry more accessible, and he’s using a grant funded by the National Institutes of Health to create the ways and means to do it. Shaw’s son is visually impaired, and while that’s a pretty good motivation for such a project, Shaw says it was observing a friend of his son’s that really got him thinking about ways of gathering information that don’t require eyesight.  

At a birthday party in Shaw’s backyard, his son’s friend, who is blind, began putting things in his mouth, trying to identify and understand what he found. Shaw realized that the idea of alternative methods of gathering information could be applied to chemistry. What if a blind student could use a 3D model or a tactile image to understand the parts of a butterfly or the structure of a molecule? And what if machines could do some of the dangerous work of experimentation, like mixing volatile compounds in just the right amounts? These alternative ways of interacting would give blind people the ability to study chemistry, and even to pursue science as a career.

My Texas Standard story about Shaw’s work, and the group of blind and visually impaired students he invited to his lab, was personal for me. I’m visually impaired, and when I was a junior in high school, I was on the college track. That meant I should be taking chemistry – but I was told I couldn’t, because I didn’t have the vision needed to do experiments. I never planned to make a career of science, but I enjoyed the physical science and biology courses I had taken, and I had done well. Being told “no” let me know that my disability was more visible than my intelligence. That never feels good.  

So when I watched these high school kids learning about molecules and measuring out chemicals to make compounds in a college chemistry lab, I had to reflect on how a willingness to see beyond the obvious – plus some modern printing and robotics technology – can open doors to careers that wouldn’t have been possible when I ended my science career after 10th grade.

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