How can we improve the accessibility of chemistry?

We have to remake the lab from the tools in it to the way it's even designed to the way

we behave in the lab. We have to rebuild it to make it accessible to all these different

types of people. It's Thursday, February 22nd, George Washington's birthday.

Also, the birthday of Heinrich Hertz, as in frequency, and Johannes Bronstead of acid-based theory fame.

And on top of all that, it's Science Friday.

I'm SciFry producer Charles Bergquist.

The world of chemistry can be a very visual place.

You've got diagrams of molecules, a lab filled with rows of bottles and vials.

People might observe chemical reactions by watching for changing colors or searching for specific peaks on a graph.

Since those experiences all rely in large part on vision, they're less accessible to blind and low vision people.

Scientists are now working to make chemistry more accessible, with techniques that include 3D printing that let students feel the data.

Joining me now with Dr. Brian Shaw, he's a professor of biochemistry at Baylor University in

Waco, Texas, and one of the authors

describing the touchy techniques in the journal Science Advances. Welcome to Science Friday.

Hey, Ira. Great to be here. Nice to have you. Okay, can you describe these tactile prints from me?

What do they like? Well, tactile graphics have been around for a while,

but the ones we're developing, yes, they're tactile, but they're also visual. So they're universal.

They're what artists call lithophanes. So it is a tactile graphic that will project whatever

you see on the video screen as a tactile readout.

But the material we make them up, it's a translucent, not transparent, but translucent polymer.

So if you hold them up to the light, like a room light, they'll start glowing in this sort of picture perfect fashion that

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