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Brilliance and Resilience: A New Perspective to the Challenges, Practices and Needs of University Students with Visual Impairments in India

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Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2023 (INTERACT 2023)

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Abstract

People with visual impairments in India have low literacy rates and only a few pursue higher education at the country's top universities. We present an insight into the educational experiences of these few university students with visual impairment based on the Frame of Interdependence. We found that educational challenges arise when interdependence fails due to restricted or misfitted assistance from social relations and ableist social interactions. Analysis of practices to overcome these challenges from the lens of Resilience Theory revealed that students develop a sense of self-confidence through successful academic experiences, internalise external stressors into intrinsic motivation, and find ways to navigate inaccessibility with the available social resources. In addition, students express the need to increase the integration of assistive technologies in education and facilitate social integration. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for equitable and inclusive education practices.

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Acknowledgements

We want to thank all the participants for their time and support. UK FCDO AT2030 Life-changing Access to Assistive Technologies GB-GOV-1-300815 and UCL Graduate Research Scholarship supported this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UCL Interaction Centre, University College London, London, WC1E6EA, UK

    Tigmanshu Bhatnagar, Nicolai Marquardt & Catherine Holloway

  2. Global Disability Innovation Hub, London, E20 2AF, UK

    Tigmanshu Bhatnagar & Catherine Holloway

  3. School of Information Technology, IIT Delhi, New Delhi, 110016, India

    Vikas Upadhyay

  4. Department of Design, IIT Delhi, New Delhi, 110016, India

    P. V. Madhusudhan Rao

  5. Microsoft Research, Redmond, 98052, USA

    Nicolai Marquardt

  6. UCL Mechanical Engineering, University College London, London, WC1E7JE, UK

    Mark Miodownik

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  1. Tigmanshu Bhatnagar
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  2. Vikas Upadhyay
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  3. P. V. Madhusudhan Rao
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  4. Nicolai Marquardt
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  5. Mark Miodownik
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  6. Catherine Holloway
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Correspondence to Tigmanshu Bhatnagar .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of West London, London, UK

    José Abdelnour Nocera

  2. Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Marta Kristín Lárusdóttir

  3. University of York, York, UK

    Helen Petrie

  4. University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Antonio Piccinno

  5. Université Côte d’Azur, Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

    Marco Winckler

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Bhatnagar, T., Upadhyay, V., Rao, P.V.M., Marquardt, N., Miodownik, M., Holloway, C. (2023). Brilliance and Resilience: A New Perspective to the Challenges, Practices and Needs of University Students with Visual Impairments in India. In: Abdelnour Nocera, J., Kristín Lárusdóttir, M., Petrie, H., Piccinno, A., Winckler, M. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2023. INTERACT 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14142. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42280-5_4

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