{"id":2925,"date":"2022-01-24T20:10:46","date_gmt":"2022-01-24T20:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astronomia.bedigital.cl\/the-advantages-of-making-science-accessible\/"},"modified":"2024-11-12T19:05:05","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T19:05:05","slug":"the-advantages-of-making-science-accessible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astronomia.udp.cl\/en\/the-advantages-of-making-science-accessible\/","title":{"rendered":"The advantages of making science accessible"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first it was a challenge of scientific communication, now it is a way of life. Making science accessible to people with disabilities holds a potential that goes beyond social responsibility or empathy. It is also about making diversity an integral part of scientific development, incorporating people full of curiosity with new approaches to face problems. We propose to start by revising our own perception of disability, giving people with disabilities and people involved in their education and caretaking the opportunity to tell us about it, and by opening our minds to new ways of doing science. Inclusive astronomy drives us to be creative, to generate networks and to collaborate in an interdisciplinary way. We hope that this initiative will extend to other areas of scientific research.<\/strong><\/p>\n

37th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2021)
\nJuly 12th \u2013 23rd, 2021
\nOnline \u2013 Berlin, Germany<\/em><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Introduction<\/h3>\n

Communicating astronomy without images for Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) people was an outreach challenge we started to address at the beginning of 2016. Our first experience was about star formation, using a well-developed story and simple tactile models (Fig. 1). On that occasion, we had the help of collaborators from \u201cBibliociegos\u201d[1]<\/a> (Central Library for the Blind, Santiago, Chile), the place we chose to carry out this experience. The activity was very successful for all the public (BVI and sighted), and we soon found out that we were not only adapting an astronomy talk for BVI people, but also building something new and very important, and we couldn’t do it alone.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1: Solar System tactile model, being explored by a visually impaired student during the first experience.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first decision we made was to share this new experience: training other astronomers and students, collaborating with scientific institutions with the same interests, approaching groups of BVI people to invite them to participate, and finally build a community called \u201cAstronom\u00eda Inclusiva\u201d[2]<\/a> (Inclusive Astronomy), in order to learn together how to make science more accessible. After 5 years, we have good reasons to invite all scientific communities to join.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0What is inclusive astronomy?<\/h3>\n

When we think about the barriers of astronomy for people with disabilities, many of them seem obvious, but they are not always the correct ones. Most of the time we lack the information to make the correct assumptions. For example, if you do not know about the screen reading software that a blind person can use on their smartphone, it will be difficult to imagine how they can use it.<\/p>\n

Some of the barriers that a person with a disability faces in astronomy and science in general are:<\/p>\n