Virtual Education

Fun fact- all of the history classes that I have taken since ninth grade have been online history classes. I took my first online history class shortly before starting tenth grade because of a scheduling issue, and while I hadn’t planned on taking additional online…

Recently, I was on a video call where someone had enabled a custom video background that was designed to make it easier to concentrate on the speaker but ended up being very distracting for me as someone with low vision. The dim lighting conditions for…

Recently, I received a question from a teacher who was nervous about having their student (who has an unidentified disability) taking virtual classes, as they do not know a lot about troubleshooting assistive technology or supporting students with technical issues. They were wondering what the…

Earlier today, I was working with a new web-based application for one of my classes and discovered that I was having trouble switching between multiple different windows/tabs of the same app, and started thinking of ways that I could solve this problem. In order to…

Recently, I was talking to another college student about different options for using visual assistance apps for virtual classes and how they could use different apps on their iOS and Android devices to help them with accessing visual information. While I frequently use visual assistance…

Whenever I am working on assignments or reading for my online classes at my desk, one of my favorite tools to use to help me with productivity is my Amazon Echo Dot. As strange as it may seem, Amazon Alexa can help with online learning…

As students of all ages begin planning registration for upcoming classes, I have received many messages asking questions about choosing virtual classes and how to figure out whether a class will be accessible or not for students with disabilities or other access needs. As a…

One of the questions I frequently receive from teachers filming videos for their classes is about if there is anything that they can do to create accessible video lectures for students who are blind or that have low vision. While I talk a lot about…

For a lot of students with low vision, spending lots of time on the computer or brightly lit devices can easily cause eyestrain/eye fatigue, especially for those taking a lot of virtual classes. One of the ways that I help to reduce strain on my…

When I was first researching colleges in high school, I spent dozens of hours completing online activities that help prepare for college transition that I found on my own. Since then, I have been able to share many of these resources with other students who…

At the beginning of the semester, I often sit down with my professors and go over my Disability Services File so that they can have a better understanding of what I can and can’t see in my physical and virtual classes. One of my professors…

Today, I received a question from a science teacher asking if I had any tips for creating audio description for science experiments and science lab videos. Since they were going to be posting videos of science experiments to a class website, they wanted to ensure…

Even though I took over a dozen online classes in high school (and over three dozen in college), I seemed to always find ways to practice self-advocacy in the virtual classroom. While it may have seemed frustrating at the time, my case manager and other…

After taking over three dozen virtual classes and countless more online hybrid classes, I have learned firsthand how using web browser extensions for virtual learning can make a huge difference in how well I do in my virtual classes. While these extensions don’t help me…

I love using whiteboards for writing and working out ideas, as I find it more natural to write with a marker or stylus on a slanted/vertical surface compared to a pen and paper. While I still love my physical whiteboard, I started using digital whiteboard…