The Attitude of Lecturers Towards Visually Impaired Students: A Case Study of One of the Universities in the Limpopo Province in South Africa

This article presents the attitude of lecturers towards the visually impaired students in one of the universities in the Limpopo Province. First, it is argued that the experience of a visual impairment by a student has a greater effect on the strategies and methodologies used for instruction than on the curricular content to which the student is exposed. Specialized instructional strategies facilitate the visually impaired students ’ successful participation within regular education classrooms. The degree of specialized intervention needed depends upon the intensity of the students’ impairments. Despite the fact that the university has each year been registering students who are visually impaired, there is no indication that staff members are being trained to handle these students. Both qualitative and quantitative findings from interviews with visually impaired students, HODs (heads of departments), and deans/directors of centers suggest that lecturers found teaching visually impaired students is a problem, because they were never trained to teach visually impaired students and that the institution should employ a permanent specialist in teaching visually impaired students and create a resource centre for them. This paper examines some of the concerns that the visually impaired students encounter and raises questions about how they learn and how they are being taught