The (In)visibility of visually impaired people in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics: Perceptions and perspectives

Abstract

In this paper, of a qualitative approach, we sought to adduce aspects of the (in)visibility of visually impaired people in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The invisibility in these courses, a theme poorly addressed so far, constitutes a barrier to be surpassed to assure these people admission and stay. Thus, we interviewed eight people with a visual impairment at different levels of Higher Education and courses, from different regions of Brazil, to report their perspectives and perceptions through semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed according to the assumptions of Bardin’s content analysis. We established four inter-related categories “marks of ableism in STEM”, “course choice”, “adaptation and accessibility”, and “teachers’ role and formative aspects”. We concluded that the absence of visually impaired people in these courses regards how people deal with disabilities more than the ineptitudes related to vision loss.