The sixth seminar of the Fall Semester of 2019-2020 will be given by Prof. Mustafa Sözbilir. The title of his talk is "How to Make Science Accessible to Visually Impaired Students?"

Science education is essential part of education at schools. The mission of science education is to prepare individuals who would develop a certain level of scientific understanding and basic scientific process skills via practical works in and out of school. It is acknowledged that good quality practical work promotes the engagement, interest and curiosity of students as well as developing a range of skills, science knowledge and conceptual understanding.
Carrying out practical works and learning science concepts requires intensive use of our senses, particularly vision. However, some of the individuals, have difficulty in using their eyes due to visual impairments they have. Although there are different definitions, visual impairment is used as an overall term that encompasses all people with decreased vision, regardless of the severity of their vision loss. In terms of educational purposes, the visual impairment is used to describe children whose visual condition in such that special provisions are necessary for their successful education. In this presentation, visual impairments will be defined in terms of different perspectives and visually impaired students' needs in carrying our practical works and learning science will be discussed.
In addition, sample learning materials which was developed to meet those students' needs will be presented and discussed. Recommendations will be made how to make science education accessible to visually impaired students.