Category: Cram Session
Hi all,
I recently accepted an offer to study psychology, starting next march,with the view of starting my own counselling practise after graduation.
However, I have been advised by my disability officer that only one blind student got through psychology, and mentioned that statistics and graphs may be an issue.
I was wondering if any of the psych students here are totally blind, and how you got around the stats and graphs issue?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Stats and graphs aren't as scary as Disability counselors make them out to be. My advice is, to make sure you have the necessary tools needed to complete assignments, be it low-relief graphing paper, and a braille writer.
Second, make sure you communicate with your professor, talk to them about adapting certain problems so that you understand it from a tactile point of vieww.
To successfully conquer graphs, I suggest you invest in a corkboard, some thumb tacks and a packet of rubberbands, trust me, they will help you. On top of that, make sure you have a competent tutor, that is patient, and willing to go over things with you, more than just once. Make sure the tutor isn't doing the work for you simply because they are getting impatient.
Good luck
Thanks for your help, much appreciated.
Hi, stats and psych can often pose a problem, but this is not because of the difficulty in the material, but because very often, students do not have the information necessary to make the class as accessible as possible.
Here is what worked for me.
Often, Psych majors are required to take a stats class and because of this, and the mathematical nature of the course, many schools offer tutoring for that specific class. If you are able to find a tutor which is tutoring in that stats class, they would be your best bed for success. The person tutoring you must be familiar enough with the material that they are not only able to supplement classroom work, but also fill in the many gaps which you might posssibly have. The classs is often taught quite visually, and it will be difficult to keep pace with your peers after a couple of weeks. Most of my learning was done with the tutor, not the professor.
If your school uses SPSS, a program often used by psych labs for stats, you might also have an issue, as this program is not accessible and no matter how you tweek it, working efficiently might not be possible. The person, if you chose to have one, that will note take for you in this class should be familiar with the software, as they will have to explain what is on screen, as well as step in sometimes and assist with something which you might not be able to do because of accessibility issues.
When taking exams, make sure that the person who will be reading and writing the exam, if you take your exams this way, is extremely familiar with the material. They will have to be able to interpret the information and organize your work.
Do not be discouraged by your conselors words. Remember that it is ok to not do well in a class because the material is difficult, it is not OK to fail because lack of accessibility.
If you have more questions, feel free to contact me through a private message.
hi there,
i'm not too sure which uni you got accepted to, but from my experience with GU, under the lead of JF as the disability officer, she'll try to talk you out of psychs, just because she's a disability officer, and in her oppinion, psychologyis perhaps the worse you can study as a nblind student, beside other science subjects...
anyway, try not to let her drive you, if you talking to her... or her team.
psychology itself aint that dificult, however, what is dificult is the statistic part of the component. again, if you are in GU, or in this case, most university, will have either someone to sit with you thru the statistic classes from lectures to tutorials, or, alternetive option will be to have a private one to one tutor that assist you with all the work after all hours. i've tried with both, i found that the private tutor is most helpful for me. i had a private tutor when i was in GU, and the university paied for that too.
again, i'm not too sure which uni you apply to, but if you apply to GU itself, the lectures that doing statistic subjects themselves are excelent. they have the experience before with blind students in the pass, and they are nice to talk to if you have any doubt.
if any advice i'll give you, will be try to communicate with them as early as January, and get things organize. that will be much easier to handle ones semester started.
as regards to graphs and diagrams, if you have a private tutor, you can ask them to help to draw it for you and emboss it for you too. personally, i ask them to draw it large and in different collours, so that i can reckonize them, but, it can definitely be done.
i know there're a few zoners that studied psychology and graduate from psychology. so, don't let the disability officer to scare you. :)
personally i don't have many issues with statistic, however, i have lots of issues with research. this because, most of the database that all the journal articles aint fully assessable. they are assessable, but most journal articles you'll found will be in scann image pdf format. just be aware of that, and be prepare to spend most time in converting articles from scann image pdf to an assessable pdf format. that is a real challenge for me, from the day i start psychology until this very day :)
good luck and all the best. welcome to join the psycho psychology group. ;)
Thank you both, OkSure and Season, your replies have been very insightful, and renewed my determination to succeed and sense of confidence.
I will be talking to the disability officer from GU tomorrow and will find out more.
Thanks again :)
For stats look into a software called R, it is free and open source and fairly accessible statistics software. Excel also has most of the functionality you want for graphs and statistifcal analysis. I took 3 advanced statistics classes as a finance major because I really enjoyed them. I used software called Gauss, which is also very accessible, but I am not sure how well known it is, I´d go with R firstly and also look into Excel as an option.
It´d be well worth it to take statistics classes right away, or get an RFB&D book on it or look at an internet course, just to get you started, it is a lot of fun.
Hello all,
First off, thank you all for your help with this delema.
I spoke to the disability officer today, and am going to do 3 psychology subjects next semester, minus stats, and then transfer into a masters of social work in semester 2. This will give me a wide range of counselling experiences with 2 17-week placements, and I'll be able to start counselling as soon as I graduate in a maximum of 3 years instead of having to do 4 or even 6 years of study and internships with psych.
Again thank you to you all for your input.
Take care,
Jess.
I too am now at the point where I have to take stats for my psych degree. The material mostly isn't too bad, (math was never my strong suit to begin with), but SPSS is the biggest challange. We've got the regular lecture, and a separate discussion group which is mostly based on the program. For the most part so far, this part has consisted mostly of me turning in my homework, taking notes while the TA's go over it, and then not doing much of anything. Good thing it's short! The disability councelor there..well..she doesn't do too much, and most of what she's done I've had to be leaning over her shoulder pretty much every minute. I've heard there have been other blind students there before, and I know there is or has been at least one from my commition councelor, but I don't know anything else, what program they were in or anything. In other words, she's only as good as I am, and never having either attended this particular college or taken stats before, I didn't really know what to expect. So there's no one in the class to help me, but that's not so bad as I've had that sort of setup in a college math class or two before, and I found it a bit distracting. It might've been useful in the lab though... Also no one bothered to tell me exactly what I was in for, or what would be expected of me when I was registering for the class.
I've got a test in both sections next week, and I wrote the professor in charge of the lab to ask her if I could be excused from the test this time around. I told her not only didn't I have JAWS where I needed it, I don't even know if SPSS itself is accessible. From what I see here, it is not. Well, at least I can tell her for sure now... Ug, this is a nightmare...
I've never taken psychology but I did have the two semesters of mathematics that were required for my college changed to economics and also took logic from the perspective of theory/reading rather than the visual aspect. Perhaps, you can work it out so that they teach you the the theory and give you sheets with clear statistics on them as numbers instead of all the graphics. Is this idea new or has this always been a part of psychology? I thought it was mostly theory and similar to anthropology/sociology, both of which I took. I actually have a BA in sociology. But anyway, try the theory approach. It may suffice, so long as you actually know the material and understand it.
If not, then
http://www.brailleplus.net
works with all manner of texts and specialises in graphs and other visual materials. You'll need to pay but at least you'll have a truly accurate (as much as the haptic sense can give you anyway) representation of what's in the print book.
http://www.brailleworks.com
may also be of help, though I haven't reviewed their page. I believe the NLS also has a list of certified transcribers. So you may have someone in your state who can help. I'd say try the Red Cross but they can take a long time to return the books.
Oh, the graphs aren't really a problem. I mean of course I don't love them, but I can do them alright, or at least, as decently as I can do anything else in math. My problem is that they're pretty much demanding I use the SPSS program for part of my grade, and that just can't happen. I'm sorry if my last post came out as a bit more of a vent than I had intended; it's just that this whole thing has got me a bit down. Ever since getting accepted to this college, I've had nearly constant problems of one type or another, and lately, stats has been the biggest thorn in my side. My one consolation is that almost no one likes stats, but of course, most people don't face our unique challenges. I'm working on transferring in January to a smaller college with a bigger and seemingly more active disabilities office.
Some people at the college have been working on it, and they've got a program called Adobi Access Bridge that they say works well with Jaws. Now I've got an appointment on Monday to go in and have a mini training session with it. Has anyone ever heard of this program?
so happy I found this topic, I'll keep it in mind.