This blog was written by Laud Ebenezer Freeman, PhD student in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) at The Open University.
Research with persons with disabilities can expose unconscious assumptions we often do not know we carry. While conducting fieldwork in Ghana as part of my PhD research, I encountered such a moment that has stayed with me. Its lasting impact on me is not because it was dramatic, but because it challenged deeply-embedded assumptions I was not aware I held.
Students with Visual Impairments (VI) face diverse challenges accessing and participating in STEM learning, contributing to their underrepresentation in STEM fields. My research examines how teachers adapt the STEM curriculum to teach students with VI, the challenges teachers encounter in the adaptation process, and how these shape the STEM learning experiences of students with VI. Participants included STEM teachers and students with VI in both special and inclusive school contexts.
The incident occurred one afternoon in October during a focus group discussion in the special school. Around that time of year, temperatures in Ghana are typically high. As the discussion progressed, the room became increasingly hot. Four overhead fans rotated at full speed, recirculating the hot air and creating a constant background noise that I worried would compromise the quality of the audio recordings.
So, I suggested to the students that we move outside to continue the discussion under a tree located about ten metres from the building. The response from the students was swift and unexpected. Almost in unison, they asked: “Sir, please, which tree?”
I replied instinctively, pointing in the direction of the tree: “The one in front of this building – straight ahead.”
The students asked again: “Where?”
In that brief exchange, I noticed the uncertainty on their faces. Nonetheless, they remained calm.
As a sighted person, my response and the direction I had pointed to felt sufficient. There was only one large tree located a few steps outside the door; it could not be missed. Moreover, the students were on their school campus – a familiar terrain. They navigated their way safely to the meeting venue. Surely, they must know the tree. How could they not know something with such an imposing presence on their school compound? These were the thoughts on my mind in that moment.
Then it struck me that I was communicating with students with VI. I suddenly realised that the two questions they asked me meant something deeper – they understood my ignorance about how non-visual perception, spatial orientation and mobility work in their world.
Upon that sudden realisation, I abandoned the idea of moving outdoors. Interestingly, both digital recorders captured the conversation – perhaps as a reminder of the often-unexamined assumptions and actions that shape my everyday decisions and actions as a sighted person.
For a person with VI, identifying ‘the tree in front of the building’ was not simply a matter of walking out the front door and gathering under its shaded branches in a few leisurely steps. It required a precise description, physical orientation, spatial mapping with reference points, etc, which I had not provided. My suggestion was based on the mistaken assumption that the students and I shared similar visual sensory profiles.
The significance of the moment went far beyond the decision to stay indoors. It became a point of deep reflection on how exclusion can be unintentionally produced through sight-normed assumptions. The encounter reveals how sight-normed practices are deeply embedded in everyday life, including inclusive research practice. We may use seemingly ordinary spatial terms, such as “over there”, “in front” or “to the left”, without considering how they are interpreted by individuals who access the world in non-visual ways.
In inclusive STEM education, similar assumptions occur. Concepts are frequently presented through graphs, diagrams, gestures and visual metaphors. For learners with VI, meaning is constructed through alternative sensory and cognitive pathways, including tactile and auditory modalities. Information that may be instantly processed by sighted learners often requires structured access and mediation for learners with VI to make meaning from it.
This understanding has implications not only for teaching STEM but also for inclusive research practice. As inclusive researchers, we are not neutral observers; we are participants in the environments we study. Our unconscious biases and unquestioned sight-normed assumptions can impact research in subtle but significant ways. How we communicate, organise spaces and structure interactions can either enable or constrain participation.
Reflecting on this experience has not only made me more conscious of how I communicate and engage with persons with VI, but it has also deepened my appreciation of their tolerance for the ignorance of the sighted majority about their lived experiences. My understanding of the sensory substitution strategies that they build and use to navigate a world designed primarily for the sighted majority has deepened. I have gained a better understanding of how people with VI communicate – their questions, responses, mannerisms and research contributions are not deficit-based. Rather, they reflect sophisticated ways of knowing, doing and sharing.
A simple question – “Which tree?” – was enough to cause a deep rethink about my sight-normed assumptions and to look at the world through the lens of others’ lived experiences. Looking at the world through the lens of other people’s lived experiences seems like a basic tenet that every inclusive researcher subscribes to. However, when it is experienced, it can be profoundly transformative, exposing assumptions that had gone unnoticed and challenging taken-for-granted ways of seeing, knowing and interpreting the world.
This encounter serves as a reminder that inclusion is not always about grand intentions and patronising rhetoric, but paying attention to the small, often unnoticed details in everyday interactions with differently abled people. Inclusive research demands more than methodological adaptation – it requires critical awareness and ongoing reflection on the assumptions embedded in our everyday practices. Creating genuinely inclusive spaces and engagements requires us to rethink what we take for granted, and to recognise that what is ‘straight ahead’ for one person may not be straightforward for another.
