The struggle of STEM inclusion is still with us. If an average sighted kid can build a career in STEM, shouldn’t an average blind kid be able to, as well? But exceptionalism shouldn’t be a requirement for people with disabilities to flourish in science and math. Pursuing an education and career in STEM also required grit to push back against a world that assumed blind students couldn’t succeed in fields where diagrams, maps, equations, and other “visual” media were the ubiquitous tools of record-keeping and communication. Through another blind student, I learned about OutSPOKEN, one of the first commercially available screen readers for computers, which ensured I could access the visual information on the screen. Instead, my lab partners would read the gauges and digital readouts, paid assistants would transcribe circuit diagrams, and I was lucky to find blind mentors who taught me to build some of my own accessible test equipment. I distinctly remember one of my courses tasked me with building semiconductor circuits, but the campus lacked accessible lab equipment-they didn’t expect blind kids to be studying physics. Even at Berkeley, the birthplace of the Disability Rights Movement, I faced familiar barriers as a blind student learning and living on a campus designed for sighted students. This led me to the University of California, Berkeley, where I studied physics. I was lucky to have teachers who made the extra effort to adapt their science and math curricula for a blind kid who had clear passion and potential for STEM. I was lucky to be born into a privileged, white, educated family who understood my passion for STEM and supported it from childhood.
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