Beyond the “Handicapped” Label: Narrating Options to Teach Foreign Languages to Blind and Visually Impaired Students
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Abstract
This article describes the research project carried out with a blind student, who studied French at a public university. The pedagogical experience over three years began in a classroom when a foreign language teacher and educator felt herself “handicapped,” as she had not been prepared for working with blind people. In order to put her student on the same level of other students in terms of study possibilities, the teacher entered the blind and visually impaired students’ world through Braille. She designed methodologies in order to encourage the autonomous learning of the foreign language as well as tried to motivate other blind or visually impaired people to acquire the same knowledge.
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