Denna Lambert has always been active despite her progressive vision loss. Mainstreamed since kindergarten with the help of assistive technologies, she entered the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) to major in electrical engineering.

Getting the accommodations she needed for her engineering courses was a challenge, but with enough time, technology and help from students familiar with the work, she managed to “read” even complicated circuit designs. Access to a tactile graphics machine that could image resistors, for example, was critical. “I’d meet with my professor every week to get materials that the disability office could put into an accessible form. For chemistry I had a reader and a lab assistant.”

Lambert spent the summer of 2001 working with assistive technologies at U of Arkansas. She was also a technical instructor at the Colorado Center for the Blind (Littleton, CO), a job she found posted on the National Association of Blind Students website (www.nfbstudents.org). She developed curricula for fifteen high school and college students of varied abilities, and helped network the center’s computer system.

Advance planning with the career center is important for on-campus interviews, Lambert says. If a company requests an interview on short notice, the necessary materials will be available. U of Arkansas, unlike many other campuses, she says, is improving communication between its disability and career services offices.

Lambert has changed her major and will get a degree in business administration when she graduates in 2004. But her enthusiasm for engineering remains strong. “I like being able to provide the accommodations I need for myself,” she says. “If I come to the table with everything I need, I can do anything.”

D/C