[nabs] First time college student with a couple questions

[Laura Glowacki]

Hello Miranda, and welcome!

You are certainly planning early for college which is awesome. 
I'm not sure there is such thing as planning college too early. 
Smiles.

Joseph gave you some fantastic information, and I'm not sure I 
have a whole lot to add.  As far as biology, I took a very basic 
bio course and the most helpful accomodation I received was an 
assistant from the disability services office on-campus to help 
me in the labs each week.  She had already taken the course so 
knew what to expect and was able to describe things to me as we 
conducted the labs as well as help my group members with some of 
the practical aspects of the lab that I could not due to lack of 
vision.

I began my college career as a music major, but only stuck with 
it a year.  Do you read braille music?  Are you looking at 
performance, education, or therapy?

Bookshare has almost all of its books available in brf format, 
and the NLS's collection seems to be ever-growing.  I'm not sure 
what you mean about not having graphics though as I thought brf 
books didn't have graphics.  Perhaps I'm just not understanding.

Above all, the most important skills that I found to have at your 
disposal will be your ability to advocate for yourself to 
professors, disability services staff, housing personnel, dorm 
staff, and other students.  Please feel free to email the list 
with any and all questions no matter  how big or small.  Going 
off to college can be daunting in general, and we all know that 
being blind or visually impaired can throw some interesting 
challenges in to the mix sometimes.  We've all dealt with most of 
them from figuring out how to adapt dorm laundry facilities to 
learning how to discuss our varying types of visual impairments 
with professors to advocating for our rights for having a guide 
dog with housing and most everything else inbetween.

Again, welcome to the list, and I look forward to hearing from 
you!

Laura Glowacki, First vice president of NABS
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Miranda" <knownoflove at gmail.com>
To: <nabs at acb.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2010 6:55 PM
Subject: [nabs] First time college student with a couple 
questions


Hi,
I will be attending college in 2012 for my BA with a major in 
music.
Do any of you know of Braille transcribers who will provide 
textbooks in BRF format to read with a Braille display? I have a 
Pac Mate, and want to get books not containing graphics in BRF if 
at all possible.
Any ideas on how to make biology and a pre-calculus course (with 
algebra, geometry and trig review) as accessible as possible?
If anyone has any other advice pertaining to college I'd greatly 
appreciate it.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give, and have a great 
day!

In Christ, Miranda
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