Computing for Near-Blind Children?

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."

I know this is a stupid idea, but . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you could contact that guy from MIT who has all of the implants and stuff. The "bionic man". I'm not trying to be silly here, but it may be possible that he or someone he could put you in touch with would be able to help the child (or even associate with him on the basis of a project) with some sort of augmentation.

I don't necessarily mean some sort of physical augmentation - but some sort of technical assistance that would help paint images onto his retina in a way that he could see the material on a computer, through an adapter, in the same way that some of the new "head monitors" do.

It's a long shot, granted - but it might be worth a shot? If there isn't a solution out there now, get the kid and father in touch with people on the foreront of technology and science and they could possibly actively pursue a solution with interested professionals.

Maps

[bomb_number_20]

How about a relief map of the world that is also a puzzle. Ocean names are in raised text, and the continents are inset into the board. Each piece of the puzzle is a country in the continent.

By feeling your way around the oceans, you can feel the 'holes' where the continents go. Then you fit the pieces into the holes, learning which countries go with which continents as well as geographical features.

Maybe breaking it up into smaller pieces will make building a larger picture in the mind easier.

Ever heard of BATS?

[SmithG]

This might be of interest to you. Not sure how visually impaired the kid is, but this is for those with no sight at all. BATS [unc.edu]

Taking a cue from Keller...

[Ironsides]

About the only thing I can think of is to make a "3D" map. I don't mean a relief map. Take an existing map, and put it on carboard or something. Put something along the borders that raises it up. Tulip Paint [duncancrafts.com] (a really thick paint applied like Icing), Silicon Glue or wire should work for this. Essentially, think along the lines of helping out someone who is completely blind.

Also, it might be possible to take a couple of those monitor, run them through a splitter and have each one displaying 1/4 of the picture.

Oddly enough, google can answer those questions.

[IvyMike]

I understand that the question is really asking "how do you get maps that can be enlarged", but...

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."

Put those questions into google, and you can pretty quickly find an answer using only text. Using google to answer questions about maps is probably not the skill they were trying to teach, but on the other hand, it is a skill of some kind.

Re:What makes Slashdot great

[BWJones]

Changing the DPI doesn't really make the image any more high resolution.

I absolutely agree. However the issue in geography and geographic information systems often times is how many pixels represent the image. If you have enough pixels, there are operations that can be performed to enhance detail. Yes, your final image will be lossy in effect by resizing it and you will never be able to extract more information than is originally present (unless you have access to multispectral data), but it will be possible to more easily determine edges and relationships from one point to another.

Virtual environments can help...

[jordanda]

You could try a Virtual Retinal Display. They've shown promise for people with macular degeneration and retinal pigmentosa. I think Microvision is the only company selling them though.

Slashdot did an article on them a while back.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/15/2058223_F.sh tml [slashdot.org]

Re:Ever heard of BATS?

[SmithG]

I suppose I'll elaborate a bit. BATS is a project that uses auditory clues and a pointing device (like a mouse) to let blind people explore maps. An example from this pdf [unc.edu] says that you could have your cursor positioned with a large body of water just to the left, in which case the user would hear sounds of water and the name of the body coming from their left side (I suppose it requires stereo sound). It sounds pretty neat, and may be just what is needed for this kid. Not sure what the availability of maps for it is like, but you can download the software from the link I provided above. It's funny that this came up, because I had just heard some co-workers talking about BATS the other day (one of them had worked on it apparently). Anyway, hope this helps.

Re:Alternative media for alternative learning

[captnitro]

Absolutely, mod parent up! 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.

There is a very careful balance to be had in educational accomodation that many don't understand: in theory "you can help a child hard of hearing by yelling louder at him" -- but if he's embarassed for his challenge, if he's singled out, he won't use the accomodation.

My brother, in junior high, got poor grades for the first quarter, and being an incredibly bright kid, nobody knew why, until we realized his "big books" were staying at home. During class, when the teacher asked to get out the textbooks, he brought out the normal-sized one, which of course he couldn't read. He was embarassed at having to carry an 11x14-size collection of schoolbook chapters around with text sizes ripped from "Spot Goes To School".

I think brightly projected transparencies would be an ideal way to display maps without bringing attention in school to his disability.

Relief Maps

[Anonymous Coward]

My father was a geology professor. When I was a kid, I had a plastic relief map of the U.S. He grabbed from me to use with a blind student.

I googled this supplier - they have better maps than the one I had in the 60's

http://www.freshtracksmaps.com/hs-relief.htm?sou rc e=google

Re:Also been there, here

[OwlofCreamCheese]

how does half as much math help? being both blind and bad at math going to give her a better future?

Make a tactile of the map

[WerewolfOfVulcan]

The technology exists to convert printed images to a tactile format. You print the image onto special paper and then run it through a heat machine similar to a laminator. The heat causes the paper to puff up everywhere black toner is present (Google for 'tactile image enhancer' for the geeky details of why it works).

At any rate, you end up with a map that the child can feel.

Repro-Tronics [repro-tronics.com] is one company that can provide you with the supplies you need. We've used this technology with low-vision clients and it works well. Contact any of the Vision Services staff at The STAR Center [tn.org] for more information about this technology. They may also have other suggestions for you.

Re:Alternative media for alternative learning

[Matt54]

Everyone,

I am visually impaired and I grew up carrying around the gigantic textbooks you all speak about. The atlas I used was gigantic. The dictionary was equally heavy. But I used them even with the offhand comments from my classmates.

I grew up using the CCTV enlargers and even one of the very first Kurzweil reading machines.

You couldn't push a Kurzweil around back then, but I would often push the CCTV from class or have it moved to different areas depending when I needed it. Science on Tuesday, and Social Studies on ...

What I can tell you is that no matter what people might think of their child as they grow up with their adaptive technology. The individual will benefit greatly from its use. I still use visual aids that were provided to me back in grammar school. I am grateful for the time and resourses invested to teach me how to function in a sighted world.

To this very day I do not hesitate to pull out my monocular or slip on my heavy monocular mounted glasses. Because I know with the help of these aids I am a better person, plus a productive part of society.

I can't drive a car or pilot the space shuttle. But I can get around and operate well enough in the world to live what I consider a very fulfilling life.

Solid Ink Color Printers.

[jellomizer]

Try to print diagrams with a Solid Ink color printer Such as the Xerox Phasers You can probably get a refurbished one at a good price the 840, 850, and 860 models come with free black ink for the life of the printer (So you don't need to go on Ebay and Buy Free Black ink for $10 and think you got a good deal (Man Stupid people)). The reason is that Solid Ink printers natually print with little bumps on the printer. So say you do the map using 4 Different [gatech.edu] patterns Horizontal Stripes, Vertical Strips, Just white Paper and solid fill. That way the child can actually feel the print on the paper and get an idea where things are.
This is a Mid Level Tech solution that is not going crazy plus the family gets a good quality printer.

Re:Blind + Linux = BLINUX

[shizzle]

I'll second this. I am teaching programming to my 11-yr-old totally blind son using Python and Emacspeak on Linux. "Voice-lock" mode is particularly cool: it's like font-lock, but uses different voices rather than different fonts to distinguish keywords/strings/comments etc.