Technically, the models are just another way of representing the same data that sighted students use when they look at “pictures” of nanoscale objects. “There’s a lot in science that’s perceived as being visual, but vision is nothing essential to the concepts or even the raw data,” says Mark Riccobono of the National Federation of the Blind. “No one looks at atoms on a daily basis. No one’s putting their eye to the Hubble telescope. The data can be manipulated any way you want … And new discoveries come when someone sees something—not necessarily in the literal sense—from a new perspective.”
