Hello,
I didn't know I would be famous.
Two corrections though. My age is misstated. I 24 rather than 22. But at
least she made me younger. And I run a project for all students with
disabilities and not just the students with visual impairments.
Pratik Patel
Managing Director
CUNY Assistive Technology Services
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kelly Pierce" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 8:17 AM
Subject: Technology Eases the Way for the Visually Impaired
> The New York times
>
>
> July 3, 2002
>
> Technology Eases the Way for the Visually Impaired By JENNIFER MEDINA
>
> Gerard Guarniero spent eighth grade using a Braille slate - an eight-inch
> metal device that looks like a ruler with four rows of stencil spaces for
> lettering. He would place paper between the two sides and use a short
> pointer to punch holes in the paper. It would take him three or four
> times as long to write the same paper as his sighted classmates.
>
> Some 30 years later, when Pratik Patel was in eighth grade at
> Intermediate School 237, a mainstream school in Queens, he could simply
> type his essays on a keyboard. He sent his work to a Braille printer,
> where a sheet with raised lettering would come out in minutes.
>
> Mr. Guarniero, 52, and Mr. Patel, 22, were among dozens of students who
> gathered at a recent retirement party in Queens honoring their middle
> school teacher, Betty Salz, whose work with blind students in New York
> City spans more than four decades. There, they traded fond memories of
> Mrs. Salz's classes and marveled about the way computers are changing the
> lives of the sightless and visually impaired.
>
> Just as computers and other personal technology gadgets have
> revolutionized learning for sighted students, personal data assistants,
> word processing and the Internet have rapidly altered the ways blind
> students do schoolwork.
>
> Mrs. Salz, who retired after teaching blind students for 33 years,
> remembers staying up for hours translating assignments she used for other
> classes into Braille and then taking the students' Braille-written papers
> and typing them. The tedious process would take hours, even though Mrs.
> Salz was an expert Braillist.
>
> "It's a different world now. I just scan the books, translate them and
> print them out in a few hours," said Mrs. Salz, who is not blind.
>
> But the rapidly developing methods, called assistive technology, have not
> come without some groans from teachers.
>
> Just a few years ago, the new equipment was gathering dust in a room,
> said Rose Chin, the technology trainer for educational vision services in
> District 75, which oversees programs for about 1,100 blind and visually
> impaired students.
>
> "Nobody knew what to do with anything," Ms. Chin said. "They were
> mystified by it. They were still in a fog."
>
> Several of the teachers Ms. Chin worked with refused to go anywhere near
> the computers in the early 1990's, preferring to stick to typewriters and
> Braille typing. All their reluctance gave her time to understand what the
> machines were capable of.
>
> Now, the same teachers cannot imagine going back to technology as it once
> was.
>
> Barriers have been nearly eliminated in subjects that rely on essays and
> stories, like history and English. In biology, geometry and other classes
> that use graphics, learning can be far more complicated. Students in math
> and science classes use raised line drawings to read the graphics and
> special paper and pens to create the diagrams themselves.
>
> Perhaps the most important improvement has come in the most basic, and
> often most dreaded, part of school - the taking of notes.
>
> Braille is based on a six-point system, where every letter, number and
> punctuation mark is assigned a combination of each of the six points.
> Until the last decade, students would use a stylus to punch holes into
> the Braille slate, making it impossible for them to keep up with students
> who used pen and paper.
>
> Robert Feinstein, 52, would often hear other students complain about the
> tap-tap-tap sounds that he made as he punched holes into his thick paper.
> Mr. Feinstein says it sounded much like a woodpecker.
>
> Now, the sounds of Mr. Patel taking notes at Queens College are no louder
> than those of a computer keyboard. Most blind students now use a machine
> called Braille Lite, a personal data assistant that works like a Palm
> Pilot, with a memo pad for notes, appointment calendar and address book.
> The six keys on the machine allow students to type in Braille and a
> display shows each line in Braille.
>
> In the 1970's, none of Mrs. Salz's students could have imagined such a
> machine; now, nearly all her blind students own one.
>
> None of these advancements can be overemphasized, said Jay D. Leventhal,
> a technology associate with the American Foundation of the Blind and the
> editor of AccessWorld magazine, which critiques new machines. Mr.
> Leventhal uses his Braille Lite to store up to three books, which he can
> then read anywhere he takes the five-pound machine.
>
> "Technology is one of the driving forces behind advancement of
> independence for the blind," he said. "Even teachers may not realize what
> the technology can do, so they are not utilized properly yet."
>
> Ms. Chin bristled when another teacher who was attending Mrs. Salz's
> party said that she was unable to use the Braille printer for Spanish
> assignments.
>
> "You probably just weren't doing it right. You just have to set it"
> properly, Ms. Chin explained. "I'll come and show you."
>
> That's precisely the approach Mr. Patel wants to see. Just eight years
> after Mrs. Salz's eighth-grade instruction, Mr. Patel now runs a
> technology program for the blind at the City University of New York.
>
> Though he is pleased with the advancements, problems remain with new
> developments like Internet-based distance learning.
>
> "There are still so many things that are changing the ways we learn," Mr.
> Patel said. "It might be an entirely different world in just a few
> years."
>
>
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>
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask] In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html
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