Meet Gabe

This persona is a fictional profile of a UMaine student. It was created using data to reflect the challenges, successes, and overall experiences of some of our students.

A smiling middle aged man with short brown and grey hair, blue eyes, wearing a burgundy T-shirt with long sleeves and a wedding band is leaning against a BRC fence with his arms crossed on his chest.

Age: 46 years old

Work: Senior Civil Engineer on leave and Graduate Research Assistant

Major: Civil Engineering Ph.D. degree

Family: Married, 1 child, 2 dogs

Challenge: Low vision and color vision deficiency (color blindness)

Languages spoken: Spanish, American English

Location: Orono, ME

Where is home? Maine and Texas

Pronouns: he/his/el

Accessibility accommodations: Low vision accessibility settings on Windows as well as a number of macros using both keyboard and mouse to enable accessibility features, low vision accessibility settings on the iPhone, Acrobat HD Ultra LCD for home, and a portable Closed-Circuit Television system (CCTV) as needed on location

Gabe was born and raised in Texas. He moved to Maine for his master’s degree, met his spouse and spent most of his career in Maine, working for both the public and private sector. Gabe and his family recently relocated from Westbrook to Orono in order for him to be close to campus since he doesn’t drive due to his low vision. He wants to further his career by moving into a research position, and potentially teach in the future. Gabe took a leave of absence from his current job so that he can focus on course work and on being a Graduate Research Assistant.

“All of my professors share their slides with me ahead of time, which I truly appreciate, but sometimes they use images that are low resolution and when I zoom in on these images, they are too blurry and pixelated for me to see what is being presented.”

“One of my professors color coded everything on their syllabus and color is the only way they have for folks to access the information. To me, the colors they use look the same, so I am always missing some of the information.”

“In one of my courses, we use a simulation software, and I can’t access all of the functionalities because the platform is not fully accessible.”

  1. Provide high resolution images
  2. Make sure that color is not the only way to convey information: also use text, shapes or textures to convey information equitably (consult our tutorial on images and the use of colors)
  3. Evaluate 3rd party tools, textbooks and software for accessibility before adopting them in your courses
  4. Use clear and precise headings to help break down the course content (consult our tutorial on headings)
  5. Allow students to make reasonable use of technology in the classroom (note taking, assistive technology, emergencies)

Many more students can benefit from these teaching strategies. Learn more about who benefits from these strategies.

“Students in my program are learning how to collaborate with me in a way that is accessible to me and I really appreciate that.” 

“In one of my courses, the instructor shared that they reviewed their assignments to ensure that there were no unnecessary barriers. For instance, if in the field, data is collected by a surveyor and the engineer works from this data and analyzes it, in this instructor’s course we are only evaluated on our understanding of how the data is collected and on our analysis and not on collecting the data.”

“One of my professor has added requirements around creating accessible documents for our projects and for anything we share with one another for this course.”