Educators and disability service folk: please be very careful not to perform steps in assigned work for your Blind student! They should be able to do the thing or direct a reader in precisely how to do the thing. Even / especially if they are still learning and need more time.
If your Blind student has foundational gaps — typing, screen reader skills, note-taking — address those directly. These skills will not show up through mystic rite when your student gets their first job. Students deserve honesty about gaps and how to fix them.
If you don't know how to teach nonvisual techniques for a skill, and you work in education, go find out. Talk to Blind experts. Invite your student to do research with you on options. Your cultural gap is no excuse for depriving your student of critical practice.
If your student needs support for interpretation of visual course content, that's perfectly fine. But do not assign a peer to take notes "for" a student who is not taking her own. Notes are a weight you lift to get strong, not a pill you take to pass a class.
When you find yourself taking over for a student to "help" them do a web or database search, imagine yourself lighting a hundred-dollar bill on fire. That's what you're doing when you "help" a student pass assignments they paid to do by stealing their chance to build the skill.
I have met dozens of Blind grads (from GED to PH.D.) who have trouble with sequencing, research and synthesizing info. There is nothing wrong with their capacity or will to learn: they've just gotten "help" with everything except learning.
Whenthese folks hit the job market, they are often diffident, disorganized, and scared. Blindness doesn't do that to a person: paternalism does. Always ask yourself whether the assistance you offer is helping or hurting the development of a future confident professional.
Supporting Blind students is not always easy. Many of us have been routinely under-educated, sidelined and invited to do less. You can't fix it all but you can be the person in a student's world who believes they can achieve and makes a clear map of the path to mastery.
If you are tempted to "help" because a Blind student's information literacy seems low, reflect on what it's like to try to wring a quality education out of people who privately think you're amazing for leaving the house. These people are why literacy stays low.
Treat a Blind student with low information literacy as you would (hopefully) treat any other student in the same boat. Break things down into parts. Explain the same thing lots of ways. Practice writing down new concepts and the steps in new processes. Don't judge.
