Computing for Near-Blind Children? 209
mjpaci asks: "One of my co-workers has a son, age 12, who is visually impaired among other problems. He is smart, charismatic, and funny--an all around good kid. Due to complications during his mother's pregnancy, he is near-blind. His father is a saint and spends many hours each night helping his child with homework. The problem is that the child is now taking Social Studies in junior high and has great trouble with geography as he cannot read the maps in the book even with his 'overhead visualizer.' Can Slashdot help me help this child?"
"One of my clients has donated 21" monitors to him in the past and they have helped. The real rub is, even with the large monitors, the child cannot read maps when zoomed-in on. The father has looked to the end of the earth for good, hi-res maps that can be magnified without great pixelization. Are there any good sources out there for hi-res maps for educational purposes or a software package that could help? Questions like: Find the largest city on the Mississippi River and what is the Capitol of the South American country to the west of Surinam are hard for the child as his view of the map is very constrained."
What makes Slashdot great (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to clarify: I am not sure if you are asking for screen reader software or not as part of the solution? If so, there are a number of alternatives for Windows (fairly pricey), but the next version of OS X will have a built in screen reader solution! combined with other visual aids that will help the blind and near blind use their computer systems without having to invest in another solution.
For the maps, there are a number of high resolution maps available from the USGS which can be obtained in digital form here [http] and in atlas form here [nationalatlas.gov]. In addition the CIA world factbook [cia.gov] is a nice resource for kids with text and maps that can be remapped with higher resolution.
Finally, a last resort would be Adobe Photoshop. You can take any map or image and simply resize the image with a much higher resolution (say take a map from 72dpi to 600 or 1200 dpi). If there is enough information in the original image to interpret, this might be a good solution to allowing one to zoom in images and maps for ease of interpretation.
Check out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another great resource is the Alliance for Technology Access [ataccess.org]. They have directories of companies that create technologies for handicapped individuals.
Good luck.
For the blind or near-blind (Score:3, Insightful)
The Speakup Project produces a screen reader [linux-speakup.org] that is used in the above distro.
There is also a Knoppix based distro [oralux.org] called Oralux, that will also support braille terminals (these are usually one line at a time vt100 emulators) connected to a serial port.
I know this does not solve the map problem, but this, along with Links, for example, will give any vision impaired person far more tools that are available in Windows, for instance.
Re:Not a handicap (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Alternative media for alternative learning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a handicap (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, sarcasm. With all due respect, I understand your position, but it's a cop-out answer.
There are certain things kids with disabilities can't do, obviously. A kid with paralysis of the lower body can't run track. But the point is to show these kids what they can do, not what they can't. He may not be able to run track, but if he wants to be near the sport, there are plenty of wheelchair track clubs he can participate in. Instead of telling the kid, "wait until we develop artificial legs", let's tell him we have the best people in the room, and until then there are plenty of other opportunities and ways he can participate in life just like non-handicapped people.
A kid with vision disability can participate with his classmates in geography, but he might need some help. Help which, I should note, is required by law and for good reason. People with disabilities aren't invalids, but may require accomodation.
It's worth noting that social studies probably isn't an 'elective' for him in junior high.
Interesting problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a person has such problems reading maps, that simple image enlargement techniques don't help then why try teaching geography visually? It is unlikely that that skill (Being able to find the Mississippi on a map) whill ever be a useful one to a person who is severly visually impaired. You can visually describe geography to someone and achieve the same end.
Tell the teacher to stop wasting time teaching skills that aren't ever going to be of use. Just because a standardized skill test has a question like that doesn't mean that it will be applicable to every child that takes the test...
Low tech is often better (Score:3, Insightful)
Technology is great stuff, and all, but...
From personal experience... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not a handicap (Score:1, Insightful)
worst thing you can tell someone with an impairment what they CANT do. They'll suprise you everytime (like the amputee in Survivor right now...amazing).
By creating adaptics and aids, we allow persons with disabilities to push the envelop and help them champion the value of everyone in this society by destroying the myths and stereotypes of their condition.
I say give him everything that is presented here, and he'll not only pick the best thing for himself, but improve on it I'm sure.
Never wait for a technology in the future when you can adapt now and benefit from it. Then, when the proper aid (ie. prosthetics) comes, you'll be that much more ahead when you attempt to understand what you are seeing.
It's all good..
Re:Alternative media for alternative learning (Score:3, Insightful)
The big problem with "resorting" to braille or VR displays and so many of the solutions others have suggested -- is psychological; it's something that makes the kid different from other kids. And he is, but there's no reason to highlight it needlessly.
Needlessly? The kid is having problems with geography, geography (at least the map variant of it) is a very visual subject. This is EXACTLY the time you just might need to "resort" to brail, or some kind of relief map or whatever. There's no shame in being blind, or near blind. If you're trying to hide the impairment that's what seems to suggest there's something wrong, or embarassing about it.
Re:Alternative media for alternative learning (Score:4, Insightful)
My comment was specific to instruction within the classroom. Outside the classroom there's quite a bit you can do, inside, a kid with the big books or magnifiers can get singled out, and as I said, a child singled out for their instructional accomodation will sometimes decline to use it at all. This varies depending on the social atmosphere of the school.
Geography is a visual subject like math or English or any other subject is, like you said. The equations and symbols and words matter, but what's more important is what those equations and symbols and words mean rather than what's happening on paper. But if we say deaf children will have an overly difficult time in music class, it puts the burden on the child to perform up to the standards of the majority. But in inclusionary classrooms, you want to ask not what the child can or can't do, but what they can bring to the table. In this case, geography is more than about rivers and lakes and mountains -- perhaps the teacher, with him, can focus on the human geographic aspect, or use that aspect to help him learn the subject material. But Braille is a big step. We're talking about a completely different language here.
There isn't any shame in being visually impaired, and I know that because as my original post said, my mother or brother are both visually impaired, as to some extent, am I. But 12 year olds don't know that, and we're not trying to hide it, but we are trying to make less of a distinction between him and the other students.
Say you have a child with cerebral palsy. To get from class to class, he could use a motorized wheelchair. Or, his teachers could pick him up and carry him from class to class, while the principal clears the halls with a bright orange megaphone. Now, the kid is having problems with walking. Walking is a very physical subject. And nobody is pretending the kid can't walk, or trying to hide it.
But: does the megaphone help the kid get to class better than the wheelchair? No, he gets to class either way.
Does it make him different from the other kids who, because of the treatment, may ostracize him? Probably. It's needlessly highlighting his difference, and that's a greater crime than trying to hide it. That's what I meant.
In this case, there are plenty of things INSIDE the classroom that can happen that will measurably improve learning without bringing active attention to his disability. No offense, but Braille is not one of them; that's like being given textbooks in French because you have dyslexia. He probably already has big books, which for text will suffice; graphics will probably require some creative learning.
Outside the classroom, relief maps, among other things, as I suggested in the original post, are a good idea. For children with disabilities, the road to educational success really only starts in the school, and there are many more things one can do at home, like break out a giant topo map made of playdoh, like I did when I was little.
Its possible to help TOO much. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's possible to help TOO much. These questions CAN be answered WITHOUT a map. For every handicap there are MANY tricks to be learned to offset/get around/compensate for the handicap. At sixth grade, he has years to go in even discovering them all.
For example: biggest city on a river? Look up a description of the river. Get a List/Table of the largest cities in the location of the river. Confirm by looking up (books or google) word descriptions of the locations of possible cities (new york, los angeles, chicago,