Teachers’ Descriptions of Mathematics Graphics for Students with Visual Impairments: A Preliminary Investigation

Recent studies indicate that students with visual impairments (i.e., blindness or low vision) struggle when working with mathematics graphics such as line and bar graphs, circle graphs, and Venn diagrams (Beal & Rosenblum, 2018; Mazella et al., 2014; Morash & McKerracher, 2014). Students with visual impairments frequently report that they are not able to keep up with sighted classmates on mathematics problems that involve graphics (Zebehazy & Wilton, 2014b). Many teachers of students with visual impairments also report that their students are often not able to use mathematics graphics independently (Zebehazy & Wilton, 2014a). Teachers of students with visual impairments clearly have an important opportunity to promote graphics literacy skills for students with visual impairments through providing descriptions to make educational content accessible. Guidelines for appropriate image descriptions have been developed by the National Center on Accessible Materials (NCAM), a leader in accessible multimedia design (The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media, n.d.; Freed et al., 2015; Wall