2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Making digital content accessible is essential for students’ success in college Engineering courses. Previously, we found that the digital books generated from lecture videos with transcriptions as a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach helped all students retain course content, particularly for Students with Disabilities (SWD). Furthermore, we found Students with Accessibility Needs (SWAN) improved their sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and perceived learning significantly. However, we recognize there is a common unmet need to make mathematical equations, terms, or subject-specific diagrams more accessible. In addition, there is a lack of understanding of the Math accessibility needs of students from different demographic backgrounds in Engineering schools.

In order to identify the students' needs for improved accessibility to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) content that include equations and diagrams, we surveyed a large number of Engineering students (predominantly undergraduate students) regarding their experience with equations and diagrams in six Engineering courses of Fall 2024 in a large land-grant Midwest university.

We ask all students to respond to their experience and preferences in multiple elements in Math delivery, specific preferences in equation formats, diagram formats, equations and diagrams’ captioning, and explanation styles. The surveys allow students with physical, mental, and/or emotional disabilities to self-report as SWD. Additionally, we identify students as Students with Access Challenges and Accommodation Needs (SACAN) if they faced conditions that prevented them from attending class at some point, regardless of whether they have an official letter of accommodations. In addition, we ask students for their gender and racial status so that their needs in learning Math and STEM contents can be understood.

The resulting 669 survey responses produced new insights on accessibility features of Math equations, diagrams, and better text captioning style commonly desired by students and differences between demographic groups as to disability, gender and ethnicity. Up until now, there have been few studies about the accessibility of Math in general, let alone large-scale studies about college Math/STEM content's accessibility.

We found most students in this study possessed a growth mindset that aligned with expert view although the Asian students are less positive about the potential growth of Math learning ability. Students predominantly appreciate worked-out examples, breaking-down of Math problems, and examples from real world applications when Math contents are presented. As to the format of Math equations, most students prefer the Latex format for the presentation, and most students prefer the graphs to be presented from multiple perspectives with examples. SWD responded with mostly the same attitude and preferences regarding Math learning, although the physically disabled students need more support in “Breaking down of concepts/problems,” “Graphs and Diagrams,” and “Assessment/quizzes”. We also found female students may have a higher need for the support of “Voice to text description" and "Image to text description".

With the identified needs, we will develop open source software tools and features based on our previous digital learning software platform to improve the accessibility of Math and STEM content in equations and diagrams accordingly.