How to Accommodate Sighted Students in the Classroom: An Introductory Guide for Blind or Partially Sighted Teachers

Disclaimer: This is satire. If you do not identify as having a disability, you will likely be insulted by the following content. Viewer discretion is advised.

We know your biases find it hard to support a student with different needs in the classroom. Therefore, we have created this simple guide designed to help you with the strenuous task of accommodating sighted students in secondary school education.

1. Prioritize Graphics Over Content

You may think a lack of visual clutter will make your documents more effective. However, when teaching sighted students, unless it looks visually complex, they likely won’t read it. Make sure to add lots of fancy fonts and images; it doesn’t matter if they’re relevant, so long as they have a bunch of shiny colours. This will make your documents far more comprehensible, even if this means spending more time on the graphic design than the text itself.

2. Be Patient With the Lack of Tech Skills

If you find yourself rolling your eyes at a student spending half their work block manually hunt-and-peck typing out their handwritten notes, remind yourself that they don’t commonly rely on optical character recognition software to read everything around them, nor have they needed to learn how to touch-type and therefore, this may cause them to work in a more inefficient and time-consuming manner.

3. Watch Out for Them on Field Trips

When travelling with sighted students, don’t panic even if you find that they wander into traffic, cross the road on a red light, or slam randomly into street furniture while looking down at their phones. Remember, they don’t have any orientation and mobility training and will likely have developed less-than-ideal travel practices.

4. Keep the Lights On, Obviously

No matter how much your principal rants about your school's financial crisis, keep those fluorescent, power-gobbling, expensive lights on full blast.

5. Provide Extra Reading Time

Remember, not all students are accustomed to listening to text with a screen reader at upwards of 600 words per minute. Therefore, make sure you provide extra time for reading assignments to ensure equitable access to print materials.

6. Don’t Trust Them with Smartphones

Unlike your typical blind students who use their phones as an incredibly useful and versatile access tool, smartphones put sighted students at a decisive disadvantage. If you allow them to keep their phones, they will likely learn more about random memes and Subway Surfers than any of the content you are teaching. It may feel cumbersome to have to micro-manage these supposedly responsible young adults, but remember that their eyeballs can be really distracting to them, hence the need to make these tedious accommodations.

7. Be Vague With Your Directions

You’re students will likely find it confusing if you give instructions like “turn right at the end of the hall, go up two flights of stairs and take the second door on the left.” Instead, just point in the general direction and say “over there”. It may seem odd at first, but sighted people find this far more logical.

8. Don’t Verbalize Too Much

Similarly, sighted people often operate on the assumption that everyone around them is also sighted. So don’t verbalize your actions too much; they may mistakenly assume that this is an insult to their intelligence, and trust me, that's dangerous!

9. Keep Assignments Visual

Sighted students find it very difficult to complete any task that doesn’t rely on vision. You may think they have five functional senses, but in reality, it's more like only one, while visually impaired folks have four.

10. Always Look and Point

Even if you address them clearly by name, a sighted student may still not realize that you are talking to them unless you make a point of making eye contact and gesturing in their direction. Also, note, as your students start to drive, watch out as you cross roads around the school, and make sure to look at the driver even if you can’t see them. You would think the crosswalk and the general rules of the road would be an indicator enough that you want to cross, but sighted people won’t stop unless you emphasize making eye contact. Of course, the catch of using visual communication will lead them to think you're faking blind, so that's to say you really can’t win. But remember, it is your responsibility to include them regardless.

11. It’s Not Real Unless it's on the Board

Don’t assume that just because you said something out loud four or five times, sent two emails, and posted it on the Google Classroom, your students will remember it unless you also write it down on the chalkboard. Sighted people tend not to like to listen for, or seek out information; they prefer it to be right in front of their eyes.

12. Don’t Bother with Signage

You could label everything in bold 60-point font, and someone’s discarded lunch will still end up stowed with the extra textbooks. Despite demanding visual information, sighted students will likely not read signs even if they can clearly see them.

13. Embrace Their Need to Touch Things They Shouldn't

You may catch sighted students randomly picking up your cane, brailler, or assistive tech out of curiosity. They’re actually very tactile creatures when the object is not theirs. Try not to panic. Calmly say, “That’s not a fidget toy,” and redirect them toward something else to satisfy their stimulation needs.

14. Understand Their Limited Spatial Awareness

Sighted students tend to have weak spatial mapping skills unless they’re watching Google Maps in real time. Don’t be surprised if they can’t describe the layout of the classroom they’ve sat in all semester. Make sure to continuously assist them in finding their desk, since when in doubt, they will typically gravitate towards the peer that catches their attention first, rather than remembering where their assigned seat is.

15. Expect Disaster When the Projector Breaks

If the projector malfunctions or the PowerPoint won’t load, be prepared to cancel class. Sighted students rely heavily on glowing rectangles for information absorption and may become disoriented without them. Try not to introduce alternatives like discussion, audio learning, or imagination.

16. Use Those “Super Senses” to Your Advantage

Final pro tip: Your students will likely be under the impression that your senses are enhanced. However, before you correct these misconceptions, think about how helpful they could be to keep the class in line. Try saying: “I can smell that vape you hit 2 days ago,” “I can hear every word of that most definitely not PG song,” “and while I’m at it, I feel the vibrations of you switching seats from across the room.” Go on, try it, swallow back those cringey feelings and channel that inner Daredevil!

One Last Note

In case you were wondering, I am not fully sighted myself, and unfortunately, I was unable to find a sighted person to consult on this guide, but I’m pretty sure my great-uncle’s second cousin is sighted. Therefore, I wrote this under the understanding that I am most certainly, absolutely definitely, 100% qualified to speak on their behalf. Right?

By Kaia