See, Hear, Explore – Accessible Internships for All Students

^{Authors: Prof. Cornelia Breitkopf, Constantino Grau, Jette Knöbel}

What if a pair of glasses became the key to equal participation in higher education? At the Chair of Thermodynamics at TU Dresden, a project funded by the TDLförderING program is making exactly that possible.

© Constantino Grau

Virtual labs in the core subject of thermodynamics have been offered by the Chair of Thermodynamics for years—but students with visual impairments, hearing difficulties, or motor limitations were often left out. The project “Accessible Implementation of Virtual Labs” aims to fundamentally change that.

The funding was used to purchase a commercial accessibility device—the NuEyes Pro 4 LV. Real-time zoom, focus correction, color contrast adjustment, and OCR text recognition can be activated via voice command. In the lab, students with visual impairments can use them to read device displays, have labels read aloud, and enlarge diagrams in virtual labs—all without pressing a single button.

© Constantino Grau

But the team encountered an unexpected obstacle: The manufacturer’s proprietary software did not allow for customization, and key features such as real-time transcription for students with hearing impairments were completely missing. The team’s solution: develop it themselves. They independently created a privacy-compliant open-source Android app that transcribes conversations in real time, recognizes different speakers, repeats audio, and operates in either German or English—streamed directly to the glasses.

The result: Students with visual impairments can adjust contrast, color, focus, and zoom in real time, while students with hearing impairments receive a real-time transcript of the lecture. All features work both in the physical lab and on-screen—and can be streamed directly from a smartphone to the glasses as needed.

The glasses were the starting point—the in-house developed app and a concrete improvement plan for future internships are the actual results. The Chair plans to continuously refine the tools and integrate them firmly into the internship program.