Designing Introductory Physics Experiments for the Visually Impaired

``The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision,” is a famous quote from Helen Keller. Teachers of students with visual impairments, must constantly look at the world from a different perspective, one without sight. For these educators, it becomes necessary to adapt the learning environment, making it more accessible to visually impaired students. This becomes more difficult in the STEM fields, particularly physics. This project redevelops some common introductory physics labs in a more tactile fashion, so that the same conclusions can be drawn without visual tools. This involved the design of various pieces of equipment such as a tactile graph board, making it possible for visually impaired students to experience the relationship between variables in the physical world. In this project, we were able to take topics, such as current and resistance, and make them more accessible to the visually impaired population. We discuss the various techniques and pieces of equipment designed to accomplish this goal. Also, the results of these experiments are discussed, after using the more tactile process in collecting and analyzing the physical data.