| Handicapped doctor forced to climb three floors to meet Health Ministry officials | ||
| Story by Sinniah Gurunathan, Trincomalee correspondent | ||
| It was a cruel and embarrassing irony that a disabled doctor who uses crutches to get about had to haul himself, step by painful step, up several flights of stairs to reach an office of the Ministry of Health, in Colombo. Dr. Kanagarajah Nandakumaran, a polio victim since childhood, was describing his ordeal to the audience at a special event held in Trincomalee to mark International Disabled Persons Day.
Dr. Nandakumaran is the Provincial Director of Health Services for the North. The Disabled Persons Day programme was organised by the Eastern Province Department of Social Services, with the support of several non-government organisations. The event took place in the auditorium of the Trincomalee Vigneswara Maha Vidiyalayam. “It is a pity that the authorities have no thought for disabled people when they construct buildings,” said the doctor, who had to climb three floors to meet Health Ministry officials in Colombo. Dr. Nandakumaran was stricken by poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) at the age of two, and has used crutches all his life. After qualifying as a medical practitioner, he served in several government hospitals before taking up his job as a medical overseer in the North and East. Speaking seated on a chair in front of the stage, Dr. Nandakumaran told his audience that there were laws to ensure equal treatment for disabled persons. “Unfortunately, these laws are only in writing and not sufficiently enforced,” the doctor said. “The disabled should not have to be confined to their homes. They should be given all the facilities they need to enjoy a normal life, just like other normal people. “The days of treating disabled persons as sympathy-seeking social outcasts are long over. The public and the authorities have a duty to ensure that the disabled enjoy equal rights, equal opportunity and parity of status in every aspect of life. “A person’s physical mobility is something he or she can lose very easily, in a matter of minutes, irrespective of caste, creed and race. The number of disabled in this country is increasing by the day. People are losing limbs and the use of their limbs in different situations – the conflict in the north, accidents and natural disasters. On average, some 180 citizens are disabled every day. “Considering the alarmingly high, and growing, number of permanently disabled people, it is surprising we have so few disabled-friendly buildings,” Dr. Nandakumaran said. The chief guest at the International Disabled Persons Day event was Trincomalee High Court Judge, M. Ilancheliyan. In his address, the judge appealed to the public to bring to the notice of the police or other relevant authorities any instance of disabled persons being treated badly or with disrespect. He said the law protected the disabled, and that legal action could be taken against parents who failed to provide their disabled children with a proper education and the facilities they needed. |
Thursday, December 18, 2008
bitter truth
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
new approach
To Sea with a Blind Scientistby Geerat J. VermeijReprinted from the Braille Monitor
Editor's Note: Scientific research is not a career most people believe to be suitable for the blind, but such beliefs are changing. Dr. Geerat Vermeij isa nationally recognized marine biologist. He conducts research and teaches students at the doctoral level. Dr. Vermeij tells us that science is competitive,tedious, and hard—and, that he loves it. Here is what he has to say:
How, a skeptic might ask, could a blind person ever hope to be a scientist? After all, science is difficult if not impenetrable even for many sighted people;and, in any case, there is almost nothing in the way of books about science available to the blind. How would one carry out experiments? How would onegain access to the huge scientific literature? Perhaps a blind person could be a physicist, at least a theoretical physicist, but surely not a biologist.Why would the blind willingly choose biology, that most visual of all the sciences?
The answer is very simple. Science, and for me biology in particular, is absolutely fascinating. Someone is actually paying me to study shells—some of themost beautiful works of architecture in all of nature—in the expectation that broad principles with implications for our own species will emerge.
What is more, I get to travel to exotic places, to read the scientific literature in all its fantastic diversity, to see my own papers and books published,and to teach others about science, that most powerful of all ways of knowing. What more could one ask of a profession?
Like many of my colleagues, I came to science early in life. Even as a small boy growing up in the Netherlands, I picked up shells, pine cones, pretty stones,and the like. My parents, both of whom are avid natural historians, took pains to acquaint me with all kinds of creatures that lived in the grassy poldersand in the innumerable ditches that crisscrossed the Low Land. The fact that I was totally blind made no difference at all. At the age of ten, shortlyafter moving to the United States, I became seriously interested in shells. Almost immediately I started my own collection, which soon grew to includeall manner of other objects of natural history. My parents and brother were enthusiastic; they read aloud, transcribed, or dictated every book on naturalhistory they could find.
The reactions of my teachers in the local public elementary school ranged from polite acceptance to genuine enthusiasm when I told them of my intentionsto become a conchologist, a malacologist, or a biologist. If they thought about the incompatibility between blindness and biology, they kept it to themselves,or perhaps they expected my obsession to be a passing fancy soon to be replaced by more realistic plans.
The interest in biology did not flag. As counselors more openly expressed their fears that I would be unable to find employment if I persisted in my plansto study biology, I entered Princeton University to concentrate on biology and geology. There I received strong support from nearly all my professors;they were giants in their fields, and their enthusiasm sustained my youthful confidence.
I applied to do doctoral work at Yale. When I arrived for my interview in the biology department, the director of graduate studies was more than a littleapprehensive. During my talk with him, he took me down to the university's shell collection in the basement of the Peabody Museum. Casually he picked uptwo shells and asked me if I knew them. He fully expected me to draw a blank, in which case he planned to tell me as gently as possible that biology wasnot for me after all.
Fortunately, however, the shells were familiar to me. All of the misgivings of the director instantly evaporated. Thanks to his enthusiastic endorsement,I was able to enter Yale with a full graduate fellowship that left me free to travel and to carry out an ambitious research project culminating in thePh.D. dissertation. After Yale, I joined the Department of Zoology at the University of Maryland at College Park in 1971, first as an instructor. Movingup through the academic ranks, I was appointed professor in 1980. Along the way, I married Edith Zipser, a fellow biologist whom I had met at Yale, andwe had a daughter Hermine, who is now six. Very recently I accepted a new appointment to become Professor of Geology at the University of California, Davis.What do I actually do in my job that seemed so improbable to the skeptics? Again the answer is simple. I do what my sighted colleagues do: research, teaching,and service.
My research centers on how animals and plants have evolved to cope with their biological enemies—predators, competitors, and parasites—over the course ofthe last six hundred million years of earth history. When I was still a graduate student, working at the University of Guam Marine Laboratory, I noticedthat many of the shells I was finding on the island's reef-flats were broken despite their considerable thickness and strength. It soon became clear thatshell-breaking predators, especially crabs and fishes, were responsible for this damage. I began to suspect that many of the elegant features of tropicalshells—their knobby and spiny surfaces, their tight coiling, and the narrow shell opening often partially occluded by knob-like thickenings—were interpretableas adaptations which enabled the snails that built the shells to withstand the onslaughts of their predators.
Most interestingly, the shells I had collected in the West Indies and the Atlantic coasts of South America and Africa seemed to be less well endowed withthis kind of armor than were the shells from comparable sites in the tropical Western Pacific. Armed with these observations and hypotheses, I appliedfor funding from the National Science Foundation to continue my work upon my arrival at Maryland.
When the program director called me to say that I would be funded, he also informed me that the Foundation would not sponsor my proposed field work in theIndian Ocean because he could not conceive of a blind person's doing field work. I reminded him that I had already worked in field situations throughoutthe tropics, and that the proposed research critically depended on the work in the Indian Ocean. After a few minutes of conversation he relented and awardedme the full amount.
How do I do my research? It is a combination of field, laboratory, museum, and library work that has taken me all over the world to coral reefs, mangroveswamps, mud-flats, rock-bound open coasts, deserts, rain forests, research vessels, marine biological stations, secret military installations, great libraries,and big-city museums.
I make large collections of specimens in the field, work with living animals in laboratory aquaria, measure shells in museums and in my own very large researchcollection, and read voraciously. Wherever I go I am in the company of a sighted assistant or colleague.
Often this is my wife, but there are many others as well. There is nothing unusual about this; every scientist I know has assistants. I keep detailed fieldand laboratory notebooks in Braille, usually written with slate and stylus. Once a week I go to the U.S. National Museum of Natural History, part of theSmithsonian Institution in Washington in order to work with the outstanding collection of mollusks and to peruse carefully all the scientific periodicalsthat came into the library the previous week. While my reader reads to me, I transcribe extensive notes on the Perkins Brailler. Sometimes I will makejust a few notations of the main point of a scientific paper, but at other times I transcribe all the data contained in a paper. My Braille scientificlibrary now comprises more than eight thousand publications compiled in more than one hundred forty thick Braille volumes.
Like many of my colleagues, I spend a great deal of time writing. First, I prepare drafts on the Perkins Brailler, using the seemingly inexhaustible supplyof memos and announcements that flood my mailbox daily. Once I am satisfied with the text, I type the manuscript on an ink typewriter. An assistant proofreadsand corrects the manuscript, which is then submitted to an appropriate scientific periodical or book publisher for a thorough evaluation.
In all my work I find Braille to be vastly more efficient than any other form of communication. I also prefer live readers to tape recorders. How can youask a machine to spell words, to ferret out a detail in a graph or table, and most importantly to skip whole sections or to scan the text for a particularpoint?
Teaching has always been inextricably intertwined with research for me. I can point to several papers that would not have been written were it not for thefact that I was forced to think about problems in connection with a lecture on a topic quite far removed from my immediate research interests.
Over the years I have taught a great variety of courses—animal diversity, evolutionary biology, ecology, marine ecology, malacology, the mathematics andphysics of organic form, and a seminar on extinction—ranging from the introductory to the advanced graduate level.
In the large introductory courses, teaching assistants take charge of the laboratory sections and help in grading papers. Again, there is nothing unusualin this. Professors in science departments at most universities depend heavily on teaching assistants. Like other research-oriented professors, I traingraduate students. Thus far, seven students have received their Ph.D. degrees under my direction.
The service part of the job is highly varied as well. There are the inevitable committee meetings and the many tasks that help make the department or theuniversity run smoothly. I head search committees to find new faculty members, I conduct reviews of faculty performance, and I write as few memos as Ican. An important service to the profession is the review of dozens of manuscripts and grant proposals. If one writes them, one ought to be willing toreview them as well.
Of course, science isn't all fun and games. Science is competitive; it is hard work, full of tedious calculations, revising manuscripts for the tenth time,of coping with the disappointment of having a cherished paper or grant proposal summarily rejected, and of quibbling about grades with a frustratinglyinept student. Nobody in science is exempt from pressures and feelings such as these, but in the end the work is immensely rewarding and intellectuallyfulfilling.
In short, there is nothing about my job that makes it unsuitable for a blind person. Of course, there are inherent risks in the field work; I have beenstung by rays, bitten by crabs, and detained by police who mistook my partner and me for operatives trying to overthrow the government of their Africancountry, and I have slipped on rocks, scraped my hand on sharp oysters and pinnacles of coral, and suffered from stomach cramps. There isn't a field scientistalive or dead who hasn't had similar experiences. Life without risk is life without challenge; one cannot hope to understand nature without experiencingit firsthand. The blind, no more than the sighted, must act sensibly and with appropriate caution. Along with independence comes the responsibility ofassuming risks.
What would I say to a blind person who is contemplating a career in science? Very simple. I would tell that person exactly what I would tell a sighted one:Love your subject, be prepared to work hard, don't be discouraged by doubters and by the occasional failure, be willing to take risks, get as much basicscience and mathematics as you can take, and perhaps above all display a reasoned self-confidence without carrying a chip on your shoulder. You will needstamina, good grades, the support of influential scientists, and a willingness and ability to discover new facts and new ideas. It is not enough to dowell in courses; one must make new observations, design and carry out tests of hypotheses that have been carefully thought out, and interpret and presentthe results in such a way that the work is both believable and interesting to others. Science is not for everyone, but I can think of no field that ismore satisfying.
What would I say to the educational establishment? I would tell them that the prevailing attitudes about science and the blind must be reformed. For toolong the scientifically inclined blind have been steered only toward the social sciences and other "safe" disciplines, and away from fields in which laboratoryand outdoor studies are important.
I believe that the chief factor holding the blind back from science is ignorance, not only by virtue of woefully inadequate reading materials in the schoolsand libraries, but also because of the pervasive fear and discouragement by the establishment to let the blind observe nature firsthand. I once met a blindwoman who professed an interest in biology, yet she had never been encouraged to touch the spiny leaves of the holly.
Observation is the first, and in many ways the most important, step in a scientific inquiry. Without the freedom and encouragement to observe, a blind person(or anyone else, for that matter) is subtly but decisively turned away from science.
Editor's Note: Scientific research is not a career most people believe to be suitable for the blind, but such beliefs are changing. Dr. Geerat Vermeij isa nationally recognized marine biologist. He conducts research and teaches students at the doctoral level. Dr. Vermeij tells us that science is competitive,tedious, and hard—and, that he loves it. Here is what he has to say:
How, a skeptic might ask, could a blind person ever hope to be a scientist? After all, science is difficult if not impenetrable even for many sighted people;and, in any case, there is almost nothing in the way of books about science available to the blind. How would one carry out experiments? How would onegain access to the huge scientific literature? Perhaps a blind person could be a physicist, at least a theoretical physicist, but surely not a biologist.Why would the blind willingly choose biology, that most visual of all the sciences?
The answer is very simple. Science, and for me biology in particular, is absolutely fascinating. Someone is actually paying me to study shells—some of themost beautiful works of architecture in all of nature—in the expectation that broad principles with implications for our own species will emerge.
What is more, I get to travel to exotic places, to read the scientific literature in all its fantastic diversity, to see my own papers and books published,and to teach others about science, that most powerful of all ways of knowing. What more could one ask of a profession?
Like many of my colleagues, I came to science early in life. Even as a small boy growing up in the Netherlands, I picked up shells, pine cones, pretty stones,and the like. My parents, both of whom are avid natural historians, took pains to acquaint me with all kinds of creatures that lived in the grassy poldersand in the innumerable ditches that crisscrossed the Low Land. The fact that I was totally blind made no difference at all. At the age of ten, shortlyafter moving to the United States, I became seriously interested in shells. Almost immediately I started my own collection, which soon grew to includeall manner of other objects of natural history. My parents and brother were enthusiastic; they read aloud, transcribed, or dictated every book on naturalhistory they could find.
The reactions of my teachers in the local public elementary school ranged from polite acceptance to genuine enthusiasm when I told them of my intentionsto become a conchologist, a malacologist, or a biologist. If they thought about the incompatibility between blindness and biology, they kept it to themselves,or perhaps they expected my obsession to be a passing fancy soon to be replaced by more realistic plans.
The interest in biology did not flag. As counselors more openly expressed their fears that I would be unable to find employment if I persisted in my plansto study biology, I entered Princeton University to concentrate on biology and geology. There I received strong support from nearly all my professors;they were giants in their fields, and their enthusiasm sustained my youthful confidence.
I applied to do doctoral work at Yale. When I arrived for my interview in the biology department, the director of graduate studies was more than a littleapprehensive. During my talk with him, he took me down to the university's shell collection in the basement of the Peabody Museum. Casually he picked uptwo shells and asked me if I knew them. He fully expected me to draw a blank, in which case he planned to tell me as gently as possible that biology wasnot for me after all.
Fortunately, however, the shells were familiar to me. All of the misgivings of the director instantly evaporated. Thanks to his enthusiastic endorsement,I was able to enter Yale with a full graduate fellowship that left me free to travel and to carry out an ambitious research project culminating in thePh.D. dissertation. After Yale, I joined the Department of Zoology at the University of Maryland at College Park in 1971, first as an instructor. Movingup through the academic ranks, I was appointed professor in 1980. Along the way, I married Edith Zipser, a fellow biologist whom I had met at Yale, andwe had a daughter Hermine, who is now six. Very recently I accepted a new appointment to become Professor of Geology at the University of California, Davis.What do I actually do in my job that seemed so improbable to the skeptics? Again the answer is simple. I do what my sighted colleagues do: research, teaching,and service.
My research centers on how animals and plants have evolved to cope with their biological enemies—predators, competitors, and parasites—over the course ofthe last six hundred million years of earth history. When I was still a graduate student, working at the University of Guam Marine Laboratory, I noticedthat many of the shells I was finding on the island's reef-flats were broken despite their considerable thickness and strength. It soon became clear thatshell-breaking predators, especially crabs and fishes, were responsible for this damage. I began to suspect that many of the elegant features of tropicalshells—their knobby and spiny surfaces, their tight coiling, and the narrow shell opening often partially occluded by knob-like thickenings—were interpretableas adaptations which enabled the snails that built the shells to withstand the onslaughts of their predators.
Most interestingly, the shells I had collected in the West Indies and the Atlantic coasts of South America and Africa seemed to be less well endowed withthis kind of armor than were the shells from comparable sites in the tropical Western Pacific. Armed with these observations and hypotheses, I appliedfor funding from the National Science Foundation to continue my work upon my arrival at Maryland.
When the program director called me to say that I would be funded, he also informed me that the Foundation would not sponsor my proposed field work in theIndian Ocean because he could not conceive of a blind person's doing field work. I reminded him that I had already worked in field situations throughoutthe tropics, and that the proposed research critically depended on the work in the Indian Ocean. After a few minutes of conversation he relented and awardedme the full amount.
How do I do my research? It is a combination of field, laboratory, museum, and library work that has taken me all over the world to coral reefs, mangroveswamps, mud-flats, rock-bound open coasts, deserts, rain forests, research vessels, marine biological stations, secret military installations, great libraries,and big-city museums.
I make large collections of specimens in the field, work with living animals in laboratory aquaria, measure shells in museums and in my own very large researchcollection, and read voraciously. Wherever I go I am in the company of a sighted assistant or colleague.
Often this is my wife, but there are many others as well. There is nothing unusual about this; every scientist I know has assistants. I keep detailed fieldand laboratory notebooks in Braille, usually written with slate and stylus. Once a week I go to the U.S. National Museum of Natural History, part of theSmithsonian Institution in Washington in order to work with the outstanding collection of mollusks and to peruse carefully all the scientific periodicalsthat came into the library the previous week. While my reader reads to me, I transcribe extensive notes on the Perkins Brailler. Sometimes I will makejust a few notations of the main point of a scientific paper, but at other times I transcribe all the data contained in a paper. My Braille scientificlibrary now comprises more than eight thousand publications compiled in more than one hundred forty thick Braille volumes.
Like many of my colleagues, I spend a great deal of time writing. First, I prepare drafts on the Perkins Brailler, using the seemingly inexhaustible supplyof memos and announcements that flood my mailbox daily. Once I am satisfied with the text, I type the manuscript on an ink typewriter. An assistant proofreadsand corrects the manuscript, which is then submitted to an appropriate scientific periodical or book publisher for a thorough evaluation.
In all my work I find Braille to be vastly more efficient than any other form of communication. I also prefer live readers to tape recorders. How can youask a machine to spell words, to ferret out a detail in a graph or table, and most importantly to skip whole sections or to scan the text for a particularpoint?
Teaching has always been inextricably intertwined with research for me. I can point to several papers that would not have been written were it not for thefact that I was forced to think about problems in connection with a lecture on a topic quite far removed from my immediate research interests.
Over the years I have taught a great variety of courses—animal diversity, evolutionary biology, ecology, marine ecology, malacology, the mathematics andphysics of organic form, and a seminar on extinction—ranging from the introductory to the advanced graduate level.
In the large introductory courses, teaching assistants take charge of the laboratory sections and help in grading papers. Again, there is nothing unusualin this. Professors in science departments at most universities depend heavily on teaching assistants. Like other research-oriented professors, I traingraduate students. Thus far, seven students have received their Ph.D. degrees under my direction.
The service part of the job is highly varied as well. There are the inevitable committee meetings and the many tasks that help make the department or theuniversity run smoothly. I head search committees to find new faculty members, I conduct reviews of faculty performance, and I write as few memos as Ican. An important service to the profession is the review of dozens of manuscripts and grant proposals. If one writes them, one ought to be willing toreview them as well.
Of course, science isn't all fun and games. Science is competitive; it is hard work, full of tedious calculations, revising manuscripts for the tenth time,of coping with the disappointment of having a cherished paper or grant proposal summarily rejected, and of quibbling about grades with a frustratinglyinept student. Nobody in science is exempt from pressures and feelings such as these, but in the end the work is immensely rewarding and intellectuallyfulfilling.
In short, there is nothing about my job that makes it unsuitable for a blind person. Of course, there are inherent risks in the field work; I have beenstung by rays, bitten by crabs, and detained by police who mistook my partner and me for operatives trying to overthrow the government of their Africancountry, and I have slipped on rocks, scraped my hand on sharp oysters and pinnacles of coral, and suffered from stomach cramps. There isn't a field scientistalive or dead who hasn't had similar experiences. Life without risk is life without challenge; one cannot hope to understand nature without experiencingit firsthand. The blind, no more than the sighted, must act sensibly and with appropriate caution. Along with independence comes the responsibility ofassuming risks.
What would I say to a blind person who is contemplating a career in science? Very simple. I would tell that person exactly what I would tell a sighted one:Love your subject, be prepared to work hard, don't be discouraged by doubters and by the occasional failure, be willing to take risks, get as much basicscience and mathematics as you can take, and perhaps above all display a reasoned self-confidence without carrying a chip on your shoulder. You will needstamina, good grades, the support of influential scientists, and a willingness and ability to discover new facts and new ideas. It is not enough to dowell in courses; one must make new observations, design and carry out tests of hypotheses that have been carefully thought out, and interpret and presentthe results in such a way that the work is both believable and interesting to others. Science is not for everyone, but I can think of no field that ismore satisfying.
What would I say to the educational establishment? I would tell them that the prevailing attitudes about science and the blind must be reformed. For toolong the scientifically inclined blind have been steered only toward the social sciences and other "safe" disciplines, and away from fields in which laboratoryand outdoor studies are important.
I believe that the chief factor holding the blind back from science is ignorance, not only by virtue of woefully inadequate reading materials in the schoolsand libraries, but also because of the pervasive fear and discouragement by the establishment to let the blind observe nature firsthand. I once met a blindwoman who professed an interest in biology, yet she had never been encouraged to touch the spiny leaves of the holly.
Observation is the first, and in many ways the most important, step in a scientific inquiry. Without the freedom and encouragement to observe, a blind person(or anyone else, for that matter) is subtly but decisively turned away from science.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
improving the lives of partially sighted children
Tips to improve daily living skills
Empathy, common sense and creative thinking can vastly improve the lives of people who are blind or vision impaired. Many people experience feelings of
isolation, anxiety and frustration with vision loss.
Allow time to listen and to acknowledge.
Never presume how a person will respond to vision loss.
Lighting and glare
Lighting needs differ and can be significant. Some people see better with stronger light, while others do not. The most common concern is glare.
For overhead lighting, use florescent lights for even coverage.
The light source should come from behind or beside the person.
Use venetian blinds or curtains, or tint the windows to control glare.
Use general and direct lighting from a lamp. A lamp with a shade and extendable arm is best. Check the electrical cord position for safety.
Encourage the person to experiment with lighting.
Avoid major changes in lighting (e.g. a bright room leading to a dim corridor and vice versa).
Maintain even lighting throughout buildings.
Reading and writing
Most people with vision loss have difficulty reading and writing. However, the following may help:
Magnifiers can be useful
Use a black text marker on white paper. Check print size and thickness.
A sighted person can assist in reading materials.
Use upper and lowercase letters for better visibility as this gives more shape to words. Do not use capital letters only.
Do not underline words.
For typed print use the strongest contrast possible (e.g. black type on white paper). Univers or Arial font style above 12pt is recommended.
Colour contrast
High contrast colours, such as black on white, make objects easier to see. Tips:
Use dark liquid in light cups and vice versa.
Crockery and cutlery should contrast with tablecloths or tabletops.
Use plain colours rather than patterns.
Use contrast to assist with home and office environments (e.g. contrasting black stair railing on a white wall).
Meal times
Dining and eating can be stressful, embarrassing and frustrating if people cannot see the food. Tips:
When setting the table use contrasting colours (e.g. contrasting napkins and tablecloths) and appropriate lighting.
Inform the person about what is on the table and where it is located (e.g. Your drink is on your right and the salt is straight in front." )
Explain the location of the food on the dinner plate (e.g. "The meat is nearest to you at six o'clock, the potatoes are on the right at three o'clock, and
the carrots are on the left at nine o'clock"). Meat should be placed near the person to assist with cutting.
When filling glasses or cups, leave approximately one centimetre to help prevent spills.
Recreation tips
Make information accessible by putting newsletters or brochures into accessible formats (e.g. Braille, large print, audio cassette or electronic).
Use the 'bigger, bolder, brighter' and 'using other senses' principles when designing activities.
Mark containers, appliance settings and equipment with coloured elastic bands, liquid paper, tape, coloured stickers or Velcro to help identify them.
Facilitate non-sight activities such as music, reminiscence, quizzes or discussions. Massage and aromatherapy are activities which can stimulate touch and
smell. Handicrafts such as pottery, wool craft and gardening are also recommended.
Modifying activities involves, trial and error, time and encouragement.
Keep conflicting or background noise to a minimum during activities, as it can interfere with the use of hearing as a substitute for vision.
Have a place for activity equipment and always return it there. This will help the person know where to locate it. If you move things, tell them.
Keep a few chairs near windows for reading or doing handcraft in natural light.
Readers can access Braille, large print or talking books from the Vision Australia Library. Audio described videos, newspapers and magazines, and information
in other languages is also available. Materials are posted free to borrowers.
Tactile and large print board games are available from Vision Australia.
Mark on/off buttons on appliances using contrasting colours markers, stickers or textures (e.g. Velcro or Polymark paint) for easy identification. This
is useful for cassette players and remote controls.
Braille, large print or talking watches and clocks can assist with daily routines.
Using the telephone can be made easier by using tactile markers, large print number stickers or large button phones.
When watching TV, the closer the person is to the TV, the better the picture.
Through radio station RPH for the Print Handicapped, information can be obtained from newspapers and magazines. Call Vision Australia RPH radio for more
information.
Helpful products
Magnifiers
Torch magnifiers
Hand-held magnifiers
Stand magnifiers
Telescopic aids
Closed Circuit Television*
Large print
Diary and teledex
Pill dispensers
Clocks and Watches
Talking
Clocks and watches
Bathroom and kitchen scales
Computers
Empathy, common sense and creative thinking can vastly improve the lives of people who are blind or vision impaired. Many people experience feelings of
isolation, anxiety and frustration with vision loss.
Allow time to listen and to acknowledge.
Never presume how a person will respond to vision loss.
Lighting and glare
Lighting needs differ and can be significant. Some people see better with stronger light, while others do not. The most common concern is glare.
For overhead lighting, use florescent lights for even coverage.
The light source should come from behind or beside the person.
Use venetian blinds or curtains, or tint the windows to control glare.
Use general and direct lighting from a lamp. A lamp with a shade and extendable arm is best. Check the electrical cord position for safety.
Encourage the person to experiment with lighting.
Avoid major changes in lighting (e.g. a bright room leading to a dim corridor and vice versa).
Maintain even lighting throughout buildings.
Reading and writing
Most people with vision loss have difficulty reading and writing. However, the following may help:
Magnifiers can be useful
Use a black text marker on white paper. Check print size and thickness.
A sighted person can assist in reading materials.
Use upper and lowercase letters for better visibility as this gives more shape to words. Do not use capital letters only.
Do not underline words.
For typed print use the strongest contrast possible (e.g. black type on white paper). Univers or Arial font style above 12pt is recommended.
Colour contrast
High contrast colours, such as black on white, make objects easier to see. Tips:
Use dark liquid in light cups and vice versa.
Crockery and cutlery should contrast with tablecloths or tabletops.
Use plain colours rather than patterns.
Use contrast to assist with home and office environments (e.g. contrasting black stair railing on a white wall).
Meal times
Dining and eating can be stressful, embarrassing and frustrating if people cannot see the food. Tips:
When setting the table use contrasting colours (e.g. contrasting napkins and tablecloths) and appropriate lighting.
Inform the person about what is on the table and where it is located (e.g. Your drink is on your right and the salt is straight in front." )
Explain the location of the food on the dinner plate (e.g. "The meat is nearest to you at six o'clock, the potatoes are on the right at three o'clock, and
the carrots are on the left at nine o'clock"). Meat should be placed near the person to assist with cutting.
When filling glasses or cups, leave approximately one centimetre to help prevent spills.
Recreation tips
Make information accessible by putting newsletters or brochures into accessible formats (e.g. Braille, large print, audio cassette or electronic).
Use the 'bigger, bolder, brighter' and 'using other senses' principles when designing activities.
Mark containers, appliance settings and equipment with coloured elastic bands, liquid paper, tape, coloured stickers or Velcro to help identify them.
Facilitate non-sight activities such as music, reminiscence, quizzes or discussions. Massage and aromatherapy are activities which can stimulate touch and
smell. Handicrafts such as pottery, wool craft and gardening are also recommended.
Modifying activities involves, trial and error, time and encouragement.
Keep conflicting or background noise to a minimum during activities, as it can interfere with the use of hearing as a substitute for vision.
Have a place for activity equipment and always return it there. This will help the person know where to locate it. If you move things, tell them.
Keep a few chairs near windows for reading or doing handcraft in natural light.
Readers can access Braille, large print or talking books from the Vision Australia Library. Audio described videos, newspapers and magazines, and information
in other languages is also available. Materials are posted free to borrowers.
Tactile and large print board games are available from Vision Australia.
Mark on/off buttons on appliances using contrasting colours markers, stickers or textures (e.g. Velcro or Polymark paint) for easy identification. This
is useful for cassette players and remote controls.
Braille, large print or talking watches and clocks can assist with daily routines.
Using the telephone can be made easier by using tactile markers, large print number stickers or large button phones.
When watching TV, the closer the person is to the TV, the better the picture.
Through radio station RPH for the Print Handicapped, information can be obtained from newspapers and magazines. Call Vision Australia RPH radio for more
information.
Helpful products
Magnifiers
Torch magnifiers
Hand-held magnifiers
Stand magnifiers
Telescopic aids
Closed Circuit Television*
Large print
Diary and teledex
Pill dispensers
Clocks and Watches
Talking
Clocks and watches
Bathroom and kitchen scales
Computers
Saturday, December 13, 2008
GLOBAL BLINDNESS
GLOBAL BLINDNESS - A Preventable Tragedy
Over the next decade the need for effective blindness prevention and treatment programs will become an increasingly urgent problem on a global level.
The number of people in need is growing far more rapidly than the eye care services to help them. It is commonly estimated that without proper interventions,the number of blind people in the world will increase from 37 million today to 75 million by 2020. At present, another 135 million have debilitating lowvision.
• Every 5 seconds a person in the world goes blind and a child goes blind every minute.• Ninety percent of the world’s blind people live in developing countries.• Two out of three blind people in the world are women, yet they are the least likely to obtain sight restoring services.
Over the next decade the need for effective blindness prevention and treatment programs will become an increasingly urgent problem on a global level.
The number of people in need is growing far more rapidly than the eye care services to help them. It is commonly estimated that without proper interventions,the number of blind people in the world will increase from 37 million today to 75 million by 2020. At present, another 135 million have debilitating lowvision.
• Every 5 seconds a person in the world goes blind and a child goes blind every minute.• Ninety percent of the world’s blind people live in developing countries.• Two out of three blind people in the world are women, yet they are the least likely to obtain sight restoring services.
Friday, December 12, 2008
amazing tool for blind children
When computer science professor
Gary Bishop
looks at a Dance Dance Revolution video game, he doesn't see just the latest gadget, he sees a tool he can adapt for kids with disabilities.
For instance, Bishop, a 2008 Kauffman Fellow, and a team of students from his 2004 software engineering class hijacked a Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) pad
to create a "Braille twister" game for children ages 2 to 8 who are visually impaired or blind.
The team used a $15 adapter to plug the DDR pad into an ordinary computer, then programmed software that allows kids to spell Braille symbols using the
DDR pad. (The six outer squares on the pad correspond to the six dots in a Braille cell.)
Braille twister is part of a suite of games that Bishop and students developed when they found out that when students in N.C. schools go to computer class
each week, there was nothing for the blind students to do.
There just aren't enough cool tools out there for kids with disabilities, Bishop says, especially affordable ones. But by making small modifications to
the hardware that's already available, he works to fill that void and make a big difference in children's' lives.
Kauffman Faculty Fellowships have been offered the past three years by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences as
part of the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI).
Simple adaptations yield huge returns
Since they don't see, blind babies often delay exploring and crawling, which means they don't develop upper body strength.
Braille twister helps the children not only learn Braille but also improve their upper body strength. The children know which square they've pressed because
each square plays a different animal sound, like a cow or horse, but they've got to press pretty hard to hear the sound. So, they get a little workout.
Bishop's passion for accessibility software began back in 2001 when he met Jason Morris, who was a classics graduate student at the time and is blind. The
two worked together to improve software that Bishop and students had designed that uses sound to allow blind people to use maps.
Since then Bishop and generations of students in his computer science classes have developed games that enable blind children and, more recently, students
with other disabilities, to learn and have fun at the same time.
Like the other applications Bishop has developed, the "Braille twister" software is available to anyone for free. And it doesn't cost much for users to
get the equipment needed. A DDR pad can be purchased on Amazon.com for $6.79. A computer adapter costs about $15.
Bishop plans to keep pursuing this model of making simple adaptations to games and tools that are already widely available and don't cost much.
"The intersection between disabled people and rich people is very small," Bishop said.
Sustainability would expand access to more children in need
With support from the department of computer science in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences, Bishop pursues such projects to the exclusion of the research
he once conducted in such areas as 3D computer graphics. But he wants to ensure the software stays free of charge, and he wants to reach more children.
So this semester, with the help of a Kaufmann Fellowship, Bishop is exploring ways to make his social enterprise sustainable.
"I'm looking at ways to get a sufficiently continuous revenue stream to support students, and maybe a staff person to provide some continuity. Students
come and go," he said.
He's also exploring ways he might charge small fees for some aspects of the software while still making it available to kids who need it.
"Schools actually have some money to pay for accessibility tools that their students need, but very often there's not enough of that money," he said. "And
I really hate the idea of a kid not having access for want of a few dollars."
One possible model is to continue to provide the software to all students for free, but charge schools reasonable fees for an enhanced version that enables
teachers to measure and track progress.
Bishop also pursues additional partnerships such as those he's formed with orientation and mobility teachers in the public schools.
In conjunction with the UNC Center for Literacy and Disability Studies, Bishop and students are beginning to develop software to enable communication for
children with cerebral palsy and other conditions.
He's also exploring a partnership with UNC's School of Education.
Bishop and his students take every chance they get to test their software in schools. Once a year the computer science department hosts Maze Day. Visually
impaired and blind students in grades K-12 and their parents and teachers visit the computer science department to test the latest games from Bishop and
students. This year, about 75 children from around North Carolina and a few other states will attend.
That means the undergraduates who program the software often get to meet children who use the games they've created.
"One of my students said, 'This is the first thing I've done in school that's mattered,'" Bishop said.
"You learn a ton getting kids to use this stuff," he said. "You thought your software was perfect, and they break it."
Gary Bishop
looks at a Dance Dance Revolution video game, he doesn't see just the latest gadget, he sees a tool he can adapt for kids with disabilities.
For instance, Bishop, a 2008 Kauffman Fellow, and a team of students from his 2004 software engineering class hijacked a Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) pad
to create a "Braille twister" game for children ages 2 to 8 who are visually impaired or blind.
The team used a $15 adapter to plug the DDR pad into an ordinary computer, then programmed software that allows kids to spell Braille symbols using the
DDR pad. (The six outer squares on the pad correspond to the six dots in a Braille cell.)
Braille twister is part of a suite of games that Bishop and students developed when they found out that when students in N.C. schools go to computer class
each week, there was nothing for the blind students to do.
There just aren't enough cool tools out there for kids with disabilities, Bishop says, especially affordable ones. But by making small modifications to
the hardware that's already available, he works to fill that void and make a big difference in children's' lives.
Kauffman Faculty Fellowships have been offered the past three years by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences as
part of the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI).
Simple adaptations yield huge returns
Since they don't see, blind babies often delay exploring and crawling, which means they don't develop upper body strength.
Braille twister helps the children not only learn Braille but also improve their upper body strength. The children know which square they've pressed because
each square plays a different animal sound, like a cow or horse, but they've got to press pretty hard to hear the sound. So, they get a little workout.
Bishop's passion for accessibility software began back in 2001 when he met Jason Morris, who was a classics graduate student at the time and is blind. The
two worked together to improve software that Bishop and students had designed that uses sound to allow blind people to use maps.
Since then Bishop and generations of students in his computer science classes have developed games that enable blind children and, more recently, students
with other disabilities, to learn and have fun at the same time.
Like the other applications Bishop has developed, the "Braille twister" software is available to anyone for free. And it doesn't cost much for users to
get the equipment needed. A DDR pad can be purchased on Amazon.com for $6.79. A computer adapter costs about $15.
Bishop plans to keep pursuing this model of making simple adaptations to games and tools that are already widely available and don't cost much.
"The intersection between disabled people and rich people is very small," Bishop said.
Sustainability would expand access to more children in need
With support from the department of computer science in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences, Bishop pursues such projects to the exclusion of the research
he once conducted in such areas as 3D computer graphics. But he wants to ensure the software stays free of charge, and he wants to reach more children.
So this semester, with the help of a Kaufmann Fellowship, Bishop is exploring ways to make his social enterprise sustainable.
"I'm looking at ways to get a sufficiently continuous revenue stream to support students, and maybe a staff person to provide some continuity. Students
come and go," he said.
He's also exploring ways he might charge small fees for some aspects of the software while still making it available to kids who need it.
"Schools actually have some money to pay for accessibility tools that their students need, but very often there's not enough of that money," he said. "And
I really hate the idea of a kid not having access for want of a few dollars."
One possible model is to continue to provide the software to all students for free, but charge schools reasonable fees for an enhanced version that enables
teachers to measure and track progress.
Bishop also pursues additional partnerships such as those he's formed with orientation and mobility teachers in the public schools.
In conjunction with the UNC Center for Literacy and Disability Studies, Bishop and students are beginning to develop software to enable communication for
children with cerebral palsy and other conditions.
He's also exploring a partnership with UNC's School of Education.
Bishop and his students take every chance they get to test their software in schools. Once a year the computer science department hosts Maze Day. Visually
impaired and blind students in grades K-12 and their parents and teachers visit the computer science department to test the latest games from Bishop and
students. This year, about 75 children from around North Carolina and a few other states will attend.
That means the undergraduates who program the software often get to meet children who use the games they've created.
"One of my students said, 'This is the first thing I've done in school that's mattered,'" Bishop said.
"You learn a ton getting kids to use this stuff," he said. "You thought your software was perfect, and they break it."
Monday, December 8, 2008
Blind pilot’s adventure
Miles has achieved more than many others would even dare consider.
Despite being blind for over 25 years, Miles has still lived his dreams, encouraging us to realise that "The only limits in our lives are those we acceptourselves."
His remarkable adventures in recent years, setting numerous world records in the process, include:
list of 11 items• Attempting to be the first blind person to reach the South Pole, in the process man-hauling a sledge over 250 miles across Antarctica • Completing "The Toughest Foot-race on earth" - 150 miles across the Sahara Desert in the Marathon des Sables • Climbing to 17,500 feet in the Himalayas • Climbing Mt Kilimanjaro and Mt. Blanc- Africa's/Europe's highest mountains • Running the 11-day Ultra-Marathon race across China from Gobi Desert to Great Wall • Completing the "Coldest Marathon on Earth"- the Siberian Ice Marathon • Crossing entire Qatar Desert non-stop day/night in 78 hours without sleep • Circumnavigating 38,000 miles around world using 80 forms of transport • Setting Malaysian Grand Prix lap record for blind driver in 200kph Lotus • Setting new British high-altitude record for a tandem microlight • Completing more than 40 skydiving jumps to date list end
He is currently preparing to undertake a 35-day, 12,500 microlight flight more than half way around the world, from London to Sydney, Australia, with StormSmith, relying on speech-output (developed by Software Express) on his instruments for navigation.
Despite being blind for over 25 years, Miles has still lived his dreams, encouraging us to realise that "The only limits in our lives are those we acceptourselves."
His remarkable adventures in recent years, setting numerous world records in the process, include:
list of 11 items• Attempting to be the first blind person to reach the South Pole, in the process man-hauling a sledge over 250 miles across Antarctica • Completing "The Toughest Foot-race on earth" - 150 miles across the Sahara Desert in the Marathon des Sables • Climbing to 17,500 feet in the Himalayas • Climbing Mt Kilimanjaro and Mt. Blanc- Africa's/Europe's highest mountains • Running the 11-day Ultra-Marathon race across China from Gobi Desert to Great Wall • Completing the "Coldest Marathon on Earth"- the Siberian Ice Marathon • Crossing entire Qatar Desert non-stop day/night in 78 hours without sleep • Circumnavigating 38,000 miles around world using 80 forms of transport • Setting Malaysian Grand Prix lap record for blind driver in 200kph Lotus • Setting new British high-altitude record for a tandem microlight • Completing more than 40 skydiving jumps to date list end
He is currently preparing to undertake a 35-day, 12,500 microlight flight more than half way around the world, from London to Sydney, Australia, with StormSmith, relying on speech-output (developed by Software Express) on his instruments for navigation.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
some useful web addresses
www.hj.com
visit the website of jaws and read about other powerful softwares
www.webvisum.com
uniques website.
www.idarieu.org
visit Ida Rieu welfare organization online.
www.dawn.com
read dawn news paper online.
www.jang-group.com
read the news online.
visit the website of jaws and read about other powerful softwares
www.webvisum.com
uniques website.
www.idarieu.org
visit Ida Rieu welfare organization online.
www.dawn.com
read dawn news paper online.
www.jang-group.com
read the news online.
Friday, December 5, 2008
role of parents of special children
Role of parents
Role of parents
As soon as the baby is born, the mother and father become attached to their child through touch – through holding, carrying, and playing with their baby.
The world of movement begins, and it is the parents who are the first educators of their child.
This holds true for visually impaired children too.
Guiding
Parents have a much longer, sustained, and intimate relationship with their child than anybody else. When children are young they are learning to identify
and label the world. Blind children are no different. They need to become familiar with the world, too. Familiarisation develops orientation. For the sighted
child, vision puts them in the action.
Vision
Vision is the sense that allows us to integrate all of the things we learn about the world. Without normal vision, the child must learn to "see" and understand the world in new ways. As the child's parents, one needs the opportunity to understand how loss of vision affects their child's early development; learn how they, as parents, can most effectively teach their child to see the world.
Vision continued
One must realise that every child, whether visually impaired or not, is
a learner. Besides this, what every child learns in the first three years of life is learned visually, primarily through imitation, says a research.
Research
Visually impaired children learn by touching, listening, smelling, tasting, moving, and using whatever vision they have. A parent teaches his/her child by talking, touching, and playing during natural interaction times. One also teaches by providing toys and ordinary household objects that vary in texture, weight, smell, sound, and colour.
Research
The more sensory experiences provide, both one at a time and simultaneously, during everyday routines and special family occasions, the better. The fact is that just about all your interactions–playing, talking, putting on clothes, feeding are natural teaching experiences for you and learning opportunities for your child. However, children have different learning styles and, therefore, effective teaching approaches should be geared to individual needs.
What the parents are!
Parents are the natural teacher because they know their child better than anyone else does and have a better idea of what he/she is ready to learn.
They spend more time with the child .
What the parents are!
Therefore they're able to take advantage of the many ordinary events – things that happen throughout the day in the normal
course of family life – that are teaching opportunities. As a parent you give your child toys and common, everyday objects to help him / her learn in natural
situations that can be applied to other situations outside the home.
Or!
Also, as a parent you must keep on providing opportunities to your child to practice what he has learned and a chance to experience the world under your guidance.
Or!
You act as a role model. By starting early, you teach your child good habits that will last a lifetime. And, above all involve your child in
family life so friends and relatives learn how to interact with your visually impaired child and he / she learns how to act with others.
Or!
Also, as a parent you must keep on providing opportunities to your child to practice what he has learned and a chance to experience the world under your guidance. You act as a role model. By starting early, you teach your child good habits that will last a lifetime. And, above all involve your child in family life so friends and relatives learn how to interact with your visually impaired child and he / she learns how to act with others.
No guidance to parents is complete, keep discovering……… remain involved with your special child, give him as much time and attention as you do to others.
Thankyou
Role of parents
As soon as the baby is born, the mother and father become attached to their child through touch – through holding, carrying, and playing with their baby.
The world of movement begins, and it is the parents who are the first educators of their child.
This holds true for visually impaired children too.
Guiding
Parents have a much longer, sustained, and intimate relationship with their child than anybody else. When children are young they are learning to identify
and label the world. Blind children are no different. They need to become familiar with the world, too. Familiarisation develops orientation. For the sighted
child, vision puts them in the action.
Vision
Vision is the sense that allows us to integrate all of the things we learn about the world. Without normal vision, the child must learn to "see" and understand the world in new ways. As the child's parents, one needs the opportunity to understand how loss of vision affects their child's early development; learn how they, as parents, can most effectively teach their child to see the world.
Vision continued
One must realise that every child, whether visually impaired or not, is
a learner. Besides this, what every child learns in the first three years of life is learned visually, primarily through imitation, says a research.
Research
Visually impaired children learn by touching, listening, smelling, tasting, moving, and using whatever vision they have. A parent teaches his/her child by talking, touching, and playing during natural interaction times. One also teaches by providing toys and ordinary household objects that vary in texture, weight, smell, sound, and colour.
Research
The more sensory experiences provide, both one at a time and simultaneously, during everyday routines and special family occasions, the better. The fact is that just about all your interactions–playing, talking, putting on clothes, feeding are natural teaching experiences for you and learning opportunities for your child. However, children have different learning styles and, therefore, effective teaching approaches should be geared to individual needs.
What the parents are!
Parents are the natural teacher because they know their child better than anyone else does and have a better idea of what he/she is ready to learn.
They spend more time with the child .
What the parents are!
Therefore they're able to take advantage of the many ordinary events – things that happen throughout the day in the normal
course of family life – that are teaching opportunities. As a parent you give your child toys and common, everyday objects to help him / her learn in natural
situations that can be applied to other situations outside the home.
Or!
Also, as a parent you must keep on providing opportunities to your child to practice what he has learned and a chance to experience the world under your guidance.
Or!
You act as a role model. By starting early, you teach your child good habits that will last a lifetime. And, above all involve your child in
family life so friends and relatives learn how to interact with your visually impaired child and he / she learns how to act with others.
Or!
Also, as a parent you must keep on providing opportunities to your child to practice what he has learned and a chance to experience the world under your guidance. You act as a role model. By starting early, you teach your child good habits that will last a lifetime. And, above all involve your child in family life so friends and relatives learn how to interact with your visually impaired child and he / she learns how to act with others.
No guidance to parents is complete, keep discovering……… remain involved with your special child, give him as much time and attention as you do to others.
Thankyou
teaching tips and use of technology
Some Blind Achievers
Depending on the social support,
visually impaired persons have made headway in almost every sphere of life.
Help them integrate in the mainstream society
Born : 27 June 1880
Died : 1 June, 1968
In Helen's own words: "The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work."
Ted Henter: Mr. Henter, a member of the Freedom Scientific board of directors, is an engineer by training, and he first learned computer programming after losing his sight as a result of an automobile accident. In 1987, nine years after having lost his sight, he founded Henter-Joyce and began developing software designed to convert computer text to speech so that visually-impaired people could use a computer. Mr. Henter’s goal in the development of JAWS was to enable people who are blind or who have low vision to be able to achieve the same or higher productivity in computer-based jobs as sighted people. Henter-Joyce also developed MAGic screen magnification software and other assistive technology software that the visually-challenged have used to significantly improve their lives.
The first hole-in-one recorded by a blind or visually impaired golfer in a National Open was scored on September 15, 2004 by Jan Dinsdale. In March 2005, American blind golfer Joel Ludvicek, 78, scored a hole-in-one in the 168-yard No. 11 hole at the Twin Pines golf course in Iowa, USA.
• Blind golfer hits hole-in-oneA 92-year-old blind golfer has hit a hole-in-one in Florida. Leo Fiyalko was playing a 110-yard, par-3 hole in Clearwater.“It was my first hole-in-one, and I never saw it,” he said. “I was just trying to put the ball on the green.” Mr Fiyalko once played to a seven handicap but he began suffering macular degeneration 10 years ago. He is now legally blind and needs help lining up his shots and finding his golf balls.Mr Fiyalko was playing with a group-of-friends when he hit his hole-in-one but they were all looking for a lost ball as he prepared to tee off. His friends in the Twilighters Club golf group presented him with a plaque to commemorate the feat. Ananova
Miles Hilton-Barber (Blind) flew from London to Sydney, via Karachi, to support Standard and Chartered Bank’s
SEEING IS BELIEVING PROGRAMME
Honorable David A. Paterson, legally blind, was sworn-in by Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye as the 55th Governor of New York on Monday afternoon. Here with wife Michelle, daughter Ashley.
Henry, Sarah and Chris celebrating their first London Marathon!
Teaching tips
Use of Technology for teaching blind persons.
Before I start my presentation, let us remind ourselves that………..
LOOSING SIGHT DOES NOT MEAN LOOSING VISION
Know the extent, intensity of blindness
Begin by understanding the visual condition of the blind student. Assess how much residual vision a person is left with. This fact-finding is an indispensable exercise in the case of a low vision or partially blind student, as the vision they are left can still be made optimum use of. And accordingly ways of learning could be devised, for example, the use of large font print books.
Know the history
Next, get to know about how and when the person became blind. This information would be useful because if a person became blind at the age of nine or later, he or she has certain visual memory. They would perceive ideas and concepts differently from someone who became blind at birth.
Know the history
Persons who lost their sight at the age of about 9 or 10 have concepts of FONTS, TABLES, SHAPES, COLOURS etc.
Establish a rapport
Any child, whether blind or not is just a child first. The aim of teaching any child is to make them independent, to teach them to adapt themselves to situations, environment. However, learning to adapt comes more naturally when one is given a chance to interact and communicate. And for this, establishing rapport becomes vital. So, talk to the blind child, give them confidence and ask whether there is any special requirement.
Get Reader’s help: check with peers
There is no real substitute to actual reading. A blind person has to depend on somebody who reads to them.
Use of JAWS however eliminates such dependence and provides freedom to the Blind person to “hear” the reading material of his choice at a time convenient to him.
Computer aided learning
In the past few years huge strides have been made in the area of adaptive technology in the realm of computers. The use of this enables people with vision impairment to be at par with others when it comes to participation and contribution both within the classroom and in extra curricular activities.
Computer aided learning
Not knowing Braille is the least of problem for a teacher today and even a student, provided they have been trained in using computers with speech software such as JAWS (Job Access With Speech). Other software programmes such as Kurzweil enable users to scan in books, articles, bills, and advertisements - almost anything that fits on a scanner so they can quickly have the information read aloud. Similarly computers would be of great help when examining progress of a blind student, as they pose minimal interference, aid independence and confidence in the student. So, use the technology to its best advantage.
Attention to detail while teaching
A blind student cannot read from the blackboard, cannot read and follow line-to-line decipherers from a book. Thus, a teacher should pay attention to detail while teaching. For example, teaching the format of a letter say out, 'On the left hand corner of your page you write the address. The address of this college is Nizami Road, near Purani Numaish.
Attention to detail while teaching
Remember the blind student cannot see the board but he or she can hear well. When plans or diagrams are used, you can emboss them for your students by sticking string to cardboard. When explaining texture, use real objects like a metal button, a plastic button or a wooden button. So, where ever possible try to give first hand experience, use real life objects and try to be innovative.
Conclusion
A visually impaired student loses only his sight but not his vision to see the world. Their other senses are intact, so focus on developing and utilizing these remaining senses. Learning is very much tied up with culture, exposure and experiences. Blind students may not be able to acquire exposure and experiences the same way as sighted students. So teachers of the blind may have to go an extra edge than other teachers. Bring experiences and exposure to the blind students.
I will be happy to answer if you have any questions on this subject.
Depending on the social support,
visually impaired persons have made headway in almost every sphere of life.
Help them integrate in the mainstream society
Born : 27 June 1880
Died : 1 June, 1968
In Helen's own words: "The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work."
Ted Henter: Mr. Henter, a member of the Freedom Scientific board of directors, is an engineer by training, and he first learned computer programming after losing his sight as a result of an automobile accident. In 1987, nine years after having lost his sight, he founded Henter-Joyce and began developing software designed to convert computer text to speech so that visually-impaired people could use a computer. Mr. Henter’s goal in the development of JAWS was to enable people who are blind or who have low vision to be able to achieve the same or higher productivity in computer-based jobs as sighted people. Henter-Joyce also developed MAGic screen magnification software and other assistive technology software that the visually-challenged have used to significantly improve their lives.
The first hole-in-one recorded by a blind or visually impaired golfer in a National Open was scored on September 15, 2004 by Jan Dinsdale. In March 2005, American blind golfer Joel Ludvicek, 78, scored a hole-in-one in the 168-yard No. 11 hole at the Twin Pines golf course in Iowa, USA.
• Blind golfer hits hole-in-oneA 92-year-old blind golfer has hit a hole-in-one in Florida. Leo Fiyalko was playing a 110-yard, par-3 hole in Clearwater.“It was my first hole-in-one, and I never saw it,” he said. “I was just trying to put the ball on the green.” Mr Fiyalko once played to a seven handicap but he began suffering macular degeneration 10 years ago. He is now legally blind and needs help lining up his shots and finding his golf balls.Mr Fiyalko was playing with a group-of-friends when he hit his hole-in-one but they were all looking for a lost ball as he prepared to tee off. His friends in the Twilighters Club golf group presented him with a plaque to commemorate the feat. Ananova
Miles Hilton-Barber (Blind) flew from London to Sydney, via Karachi, to support Standard and Chartered Bank’s
SEEING IS BELIEVING PROGRAMME
Honorable David A. Paterson, legally blind, was sworn-in by Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye as the 55th Governor of New York on Monday afternoon. Here with wife Michelle, daughter Ashley.
Henry, Sarah and Chris celebrating their first London Marathon!
Teaching tips
Use of Technology for teaching blind persons.
Before I start my presentation, let us remind ourselves that………..
LOOSING SIGHT DOES NOT MEAN LOOSING VISION
Know the extent, intensity of blindness
Begin by understanding the visual condition of the blind student. Assess how much residual vision a person is left with. This fact-finding is an indispensable exercise in the case of a low vision or partially blind student, as the vision they are left can still be made optimum use of. And accordingly ways of learning could be devised, for example, the use of large font print books.
Know the history
Next, get to know about how and when the person became blind. This information would be useful because if a person became blind at the age of nine or later, he or she has certain visual memory. They would perceive ideas and concepts differently from someone who became blind at birth.
Know the history
Persons who lost their sight at the age of about 9 or 10 have concepts of FONTS, TABLES, SHAPES, COLOURS etc.
Establish a rapport
Any child, whether blind or not is just a child first. The aim of teaching any child is to make them independent, to teach them to adapt themselves to situations, environment. However, learning to adapt comes more naturally when one is given a chance to interact and communicate. And for this, establishing rapport becomes vital. So, talk to the blind child, give them confidence and ask whether there is any special requirement.
Get Reader’s help: check with peers
There is no real substitute to actual reading. A blind person has to depend on somebody who reads to them.
Use of JAWS however eliminates such dependence and provides freedom to the Blind person to “hear” the reading material of his choice at a time convenient to him.
Computer aided learning
In the past few years huge strides have been made in the area of adaptive technology in the realm of computers. The use of this enables people with vision impairment to be at par with others when it comes to participation and contribution both within the classroom and in extra curricular activities.
Computer aided learning
Not knowing Braille is the least of problem for a teacher today and even a student, provided they have been trained in using computers with speech software such as JAWS (Job Access With Speech). Other software programmes such as Kurzweil enable users to scan in books, articles, bills, and advertisements - almost anything that fits on a scanner so they can quickly have the information read aloud. Similarly computers would be of great help when examining progress of a blind student, as they pose minimal interference, aid independence and confidence in the student. So, use the technology to its best advantage.
Attention to detail while teaching
A blind student cannot read from the blackboard, cannot read and follow line-to-line decipherers from a book. Thus, a teacher should pay attention to detail while teaching. For example, teaching the format of a letter say out, 'On the left hand corner of your page you write the address. The address of this college is Nizami Road, near Purani Numaish.
Attention to detail while teaching
Remember the blind student cannot see the board but he or she can hear well. When plans or diagrams are used, you can emboss them for your students by sticking string to cardboard. When explaining texture, use real objects like a metal button, a plastic button or a wooden button. So, where ever possible try to give first hand experience, use real life objects and try to be innovative.
Conclusion
A visually impaired student loses only his sight but not his vision to see the world. Their other senses are intact, so focus on developing and utilizing these remaining senses. Learning is very much tied up with culture, exposure and experiences. Blind students may not be able to acquire exposure and experiences the same way as sighted students. So teachers of the blind may have to go an extra edge than other teachers. Bring experiences and exposure to the blind students.
I will be happy to answer if you have any questions on this subject.
Web visum
Web visum is unique browser add on which greatly enhances web accessibility and empowers the blind and visually impaired community by putting the control
In your hands! Its aim is to allow you to better enjoy surfing the net and be significantly less dependent upon outside help. Now available in English,
German, Russian, Italian, Slovak, Bulgarian, Dutch, Croatian, Romanian, Portugese, Turkish and Spanish! If you want to help, login into your account and
Visit the Community page!
Just a few exciting features that they already offer:
List of 5 items
• Community driven tagging and page enhancements.
• Automated and instant CAPTCHA image solving, sign up to web sites and make forum posts and blog comments without asking for help!
• Built in helper functions for easier page navigation and less confusion.
• Numerous under the hood page tweaks designed to help screen reader users.
• Visually Impaired users benefit from features such as high contrast page viewing, link and focus highlighting, and more.
It is only available for the Firefox browser. If you have not used Firefox, or used an old version, they highly recommend that you
Download Firefox version 3.0
Which is probably the most accessible, fast and overall best web browser on the Internet? You won't regret it!
Start using the service straight away by first creating an account with them through the
Register
Page and then installing the add on in your Firefox. For more information on how to use the service, please read the
http://www.webvisum.com/wiki/Tutorial
wiki/Tutorialthrough. Once you are running Firefox with Web Visum installed, you can press CTRL+F1 at any time for the quick help screen.
They have an extensive list of exciting features and enhancements and are planning to continue developing this product further to its fullest potential.
In order to accomplish these goals they need to reach the entire blind and visually impaired Internet users community and need your help in spreading the
Word.
The web has just become much more accessible!
For blind persons!
In your hands! Its aim is to allow you to better enjoy surfing the net and be significantly less dependent upon outside help. Now available in English,
German, Russian, Italian, Slovak, Bulgarian, Dutch, Croatian, Romanian, Portugese, Turkish and Spanish! If you want to help, login into your account and
Visit the Community page!
Just a few exciting features that they already offer:
List of 5 items
• Community driven tagging and page enhancements.
• Automated and instant CAPTCHA image solving, sign up to web sites and make forum posts and blog comments without asking for help!
• Built in helper functions for easier page navigation and less confusion.
• Numerous under the hood page tweaks designed to help screen reader users.
• Visually Impaired users benefit from features such as high contrast page viewing, link and focus highlighting, and more.
It is only available for the Firefox browser. If you have not used Firefox, or used an old version, they highly recommend that you
Download Firefox version 3.0
Which is probably the most accessible, fast and overall best web browser on the Internet? You won't regret it!
Start using the service straight away by first creating an account with them through the
Register
Page and then installing the add on in your Firefox. For more information on how to use the service, please read the
http://www.webvisum.com/wiki/Tutorial
wiki/Tutorialthrough. Once you are running Firefox with Web Visum installed, you can press CTRL+F1 at any time for the quick help screen.
They have an extensive list of exciting features and enhancements and are planning to continue developing this product further to its fullest potential.
In order to accomplish these goals they need to reach the entire blind and visually impaired Internet users community and need your help in spreading the
Word.
The web has just become much more accessible!
For blind persons!
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