Advancing the academic and whole-person development of the university students with visual impairment: suggestions from focus groups

Abstract

Objective: The presence of visual impairments (VI) have posed restraints on the students in pursuing their academic achievements and participating social activities in educational settings. Higher education has been considered as the crucial vehicle for improving the quality of life for individuals with disabilities. The present research is to gauge the insiders’ perspectives and in-depth understanding of the barriers the students with VI encountered, and good practices in learning and teaching activities at higher education settings that might help advance the academic and whole-person development of students with VI. Methods: Two focus groups of 7 graduates with VI from different universities in Hong Kong were conducted by trained facilitators using a guided protocol. The interview sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed and coded for thematic analysis. Results: The barriers shared by the participants fell into 3 categories, which are the structural barriers (such as the use of Braille to indicate the room number of the classrooms), resource barriers (such as the accessibility of the read-aloudable lecture notes or references) and policy-related issues (such as the opportunities to be involved in policy-making for students with VI). The experiences facilitating the participants’ academic and whole-person development have been identified as well, such as enjoyable social life with the increased participation or leadership in social activities and friend-making in residential halls; the increased inclusiveness in which sharing equal opportunities for practicum and work placements; and the rapport established with both VI and non-VI peers, and the support from the staff members with the thoughtful arrangements of learning and assessments. Conclusions: The quality of learning life of the students with visual impairments could be advanced with the pertinent supportive systems in terms of the hardware (increase of physical accessibility), software (advancement of assistive technology) and the “human-ware” (the change of attitudinal biases).