I am passing this note on from John Gardner.
Best wishes E.A.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Gardner [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 9:42 PM
Subject: RE: Blind student doing Physics
I am happy to offer some advice about teaching physics to blind students.
The technology needed for a blind student to study science is improving
steadily. Several years ago a blind student who had also only recently lost
his sight came to Oregon State University to study for a BS in Physics. I
was a faculty advisor for people supporting this student. He used
WinTriangle to read and write scientific information using speech, and that
application is still available from http://www.wintriangle.com. A more
modern audio- and braille-accessible math reading/writing application is
ChattyInfty available in beta form from the Japanese Infty research group
http://www.inftyproject.org/ I would recommend ChattyInfty for students
starting today to study scientific subjects. It can export XML that can be
displayed on any web browser. It does not presently import XML but that
functionality is being implemented. Once that is done, it will be possible
to communicate in both directions to mainstream teachers and anybody else
needing to communicate math and scientific text.
The Oregon State student learned enough braille and learned to read tactile
diagrams made with the ViewPlus Pro embosser. It required a huge amount of
effort by university student support personnel to create all the tactile
diagrams he needed. Today I would strongly recommend using the new ViewPlus
IVEO technology in addition to a ViewPlus embosser for tactile diagrams.
The amount of labor is reduced by about an order of magnitude, and the
student has even better access. The end user accesses IVEO documents by
audio/touch, a method that is well known to provide good access to diagrams
even by people who are not good at reading braille or stand-alone tactiles.
I'm happy to answer other questions. I want to emphasize that even though
technology will make access easier as time goes on, blind students today can
do physics and other scientific subjects. They certainly still need some
assistance, particularly with getting texts and other external scientific
materials, but almost anything going to or from university sources should be
fairly easy to exchange in fully accessible form.
John A Gardner
President, ViewPlus Technologies and Professor Emeritus, Oregon State
University
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