Working with visually impaired students

From: Rittmayer,Allison M <[email protected]>

I am currently teaching a course on film history from 1930-1965 and
one of my students is visually impaired. Several universities' Student
Disability Services websites have the same boilerplate text that reads
"Courses with an extremely visual component, such as film studies or art
history, are not immediately out of the question for a student with a
visual impairment, as there are many ways to appreciate the visual arts
and to learn about their history. In fact, a blind or visually impaired
student may open up our perspective on subjects such as art
appreciation, film-making, etc." but I haven't been able to find any
concrete suggestions or articles on the topic.

Does anyone have any
experience working with visually impaired students? Any advice? My
student is highly motivated and does great with the readings, but s/he
has trouble negotiating subtitled films (which account for half of our
screenings). S/he sometimes misses out on plot-related visual cues (for
example, s/he did not realize that Captain von Rauffenstein appears at
the beginning of _Grand Illusion_, so when von Rauffenstein appeared
later in the film s/he thought he had known de Boeldieu before the war
and that was why they were friendly to one another). S/he has some
handle on film vocabulary, but s/he does better at identifying shot
scale than camera movements (differentiating a tracking shot from a
pan).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,
Allison

 --
Allison M.
Rittmayer
Instructor and Ph.D. Candidate
Film and Media Studies
Program
Department of English
University of Florida