University of Michigan School of Information associate professor Sile O’Modhrain has published new work examining teaching strategies tailored for blind individuals learning data science and visualization from blind instructors.  

Her paper “Born Accessible Data Science and Visualization Courses: Challenges of Developing Curriculum to be Taught by Blind Instructors to Blind Students” contributes to a growing body of work on accessible data science and visualization education. It provides insights into the design of online courses for blind students. 

The paper was written after O’Modhrain and her colleagues taught a course on data science for blind professionals and graduate students in 2023. The paper shows results from a survey they conducted to assess student’s knowledge before and after the course and evaluate the effectiveness of different teaching strategies. 

“As far as teaching an on-line course was concerned, we discovered a number of challenges because participants were listening to instructors, listening to the speech output of the instructor's computer and listening to the speech output of their own screen reading software,” O’Modhrain says. “We propose a much more managed approach where students would only be able to ask questions during specific times, and would also be able to access recordings afterward so that they don't have to code in real time.” 

O’Modhrain’s research explores topics of accessibility and computing, as well as human-computer interaction. At UMSI and in the Department of Performing Arts Technology at the U-M School of Music, Theatre and Dance, her courses focus on auditory and haptic perception, as well as movement for interaction design for students learning motion capture techniques. 

“As we come to rely more on data and its representation in every aspect of our personal and professional lives, blind individuals need better ways to access this information. Currently, representation techniques found on the web, on news sites and so on, are rapidly outpacing our means to represent their content in non-visual ways,” she says. “Much of my work has been around developing techniques and systems to provide real-time interactive methods for accessing data through audio and tactile displays.” 

Sile O’Modhrain is a researcher and educator internationally known and respected in her field. Prior to joining UMSI in 2011, she worked as a researcher and faculty member both in the U.S. and abroad, including at the prestigious MIT Media Lab, Media Lab Europe, and at the Sonic Arts Research Center at the Queen’s University of Belfast. She has also worked for BBC Radio as an audio engineer and program producer. She is also the co-founder of NewHaptics, an innovative tactile display technology company. 

“Born Accessible Data Science and Visualization Courses: Challenges of Developing Curriculum to be Taught by Blind Instructors to Blind Students” is authored by JooYoung Seo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, School of Information Sciences), Sile O’Modhrain, Yilin Xia (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, School of Information Sciences), Sanchita Kamath (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, School of Information Sciences), Bongshin Lee (Yonsei University, Republic of Korea and Microsoft Research) and James M. Coughlan (Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute). 

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Learn more about Sile O’Modhrain by visiting her UMSI faculty profile.