Brilliance and Resilience: A New Perspective to the Challenges, Practices and Needs of University Students with Visual Impairments in India.

People with visual impairments in India have low literacy rates and only a few pursue higher education at the country's top universities. We present an insight into the educational experiences of these few university students with visual impairment based on the Frame of Interdependence. We found that educational challenges arise when interdependence fails due to restricted or misfitted assistance from social relations and ableist social interactions. Analysis of practices to overcome these challenges from the lens of Resilience Theory revealed that students develop a sense of self-confidence through successful academic experiences, internalise external stressors into intrinsic motivation, and find ways to navigate inaccessibility with the available social resources. In addition, students express the need to increase the integration of assistive technologies in education and facilitate social integration. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for equitable and inclusive education practices.