The Development of Knowledge about the Earth and the Day/Night Cycle in Blind and Sighted Children Using Acoustical Rendition of Documents’ Visual Elements

During this study we planned an alternative teaching process, designed and based on inclusion, for tutoring the basic concepts of Observational Astronomy (OA) in an elementary school, taking into consideration the difficulties faced by both congenitally blind and sighted students. Following basic design-for-all principles, during a forty-five minutes teaching process, in which ten congenitally blind and ten sighted students participated, the educational material was presented in both visual and acoustic modalities, using an interactive whiteboard. An interview was then followed with each student in order to investigate their understanding of the scientific concepts of OA. The results of this study showed that congenitally blind and sighted students, after this alternative teaching process, experienced less difficulty in understanding the concepts of OA.