Teaching Introductory Physics to Visually Impaired Learners

Following global inclusion policies and initiatives, more students with visual impairments are attending regular education in inclusive schools. Universities also increasingly accept students with visual impairments in the most varied courses, including engineering and physics. However, teachers do not always have experience with teaching this specific audience. Teaching Introductory Physics to Visually Impaired Learners provides a gateway to understanding the difficulties encountered by this audience and provides ways for teachers to embrace this challenge. The concept of inclusion is discussed in light of the historical evolution of the achievements of people with disabilities and the development of reading and writing in Braille, in addition to other more modern tools, such as cell phone applications. The remaining chapters present methodologies for teaching mechanics, waves, electrodynamics, optics, and modern physics in classes where there are one or more students with visual impairments. The main target audience for this book is elementary and higher education physics teachers and researchers. This book is also of great value to anyone, including teachers from other areas and students with visual impairments, who are looking for teaching materials that facilitate learning for people with visual impairments.

Key Features:

• The first book to help readers understand the difficulties of inclusive physics teaching for students with visual impairment.
• Allows the reader to have a broader view of what visual impairment is, bringing together theoretical tools necessary to value and promote inclusive education.
• Encourages the reader to reproduce the physics teaching methodology, with low-cost materials, which facilitates its implementation in the classroom.

Antonio Carlos Fontes dos Santos is a Full Professor in the Atomic and Molecular Collisions Laboratory, Department of Nuclear Physics, Institute of Physics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He performs research on ion-atom collisions, multiple ionization, target ionization, mass spectrometry.

Marcio Velloso Silveira has a posdoctoral degree at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He has a Degree in Physics Teaching from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1997), Specialization in Science and Biology Teaching from UFRJ (2016), Professional Master’s Degree in Physics Teaching from UFRJ (2016) and a PhD in Teaching and History of Mathematics and Physics from UFRJ (2021).