[Athen] Alternate assignment for a blind student

[Deborah Armstrong]

I recently had a positive experience that might be helpful to some of you accommodating blind students in computer science courses.

As well as  being a full-time college staffer I am also an occasional student, especially when the college offers a course that will help increase my skill set.

Computer science courses often cover visual concepts like UML, flow charts and graphical design tools. I am less intimidated than many blind students by all the visual stuff because I was a software engineer for thirty years.

I am currently taking a course in database design and implementation. Our first lab was to draw the extended entity relationship model for a database of our own creation. I explained early on to the instructor that I am visually impaired and unable to draw. I suggested that I submit a draft of a text-based extended entity relationship model for her to examine, and if appropriate, would she accept a final version for grading.

She liked the idea: it's always best when the student figures out their own assignment accommodation, because it shows a willingness to do the work. My first draft had some problems and we met and discussed how I could improve my understanding of the concepts I was hazy on - I had trouble  with the concepts of disjoint specializations and partial participation, for those of you who know this stuff.

Anyway, She liked my final version so much that our next lab (which is entity-relationship model mapping to the relational model) that she is asking the other students to use a similar format to complete our second lab.

I've attached my lab to this message. If you are a database wiz you will note that I've still made some mistakes, but it's pretty clear that I mostly understood the material. If the attachment doesn't come through I am happy to share it.

--Debee


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