She can hardly fail to mention the important role that Braille has played in the development of her main pastime. Her greatest satisfaction is to be able to read
musical scores and memorize them to play the piano without missing a note. And how could she think what Braille has meant in her everyday life. I use it to bit down telephone numbers and addresses, mark her belongings and other articles, and take messages, write appointments into her calendar, and note important information, all of which will provide her a good deal of personal independence.
An electronic Braille display is a tactile device that is placed under a conventional computer keyboard, or laptop keyboard and enables the user to read the contents of the computer screen by touch in Braille. They are also known as paperless, soft or refreshable Braille displays and vary in size from 20 to 80 Braille cells. Large Braille displays that are around 70 to 80 cells in length are designed for use with desktop computers and fit under a standard desktop keyboard. Braille displays for laptop and notebook computers have about 40 cells or less. Braille can provide layout information more efficiently and using a Braille display is described by users as more accurate. A spelling mistake, for example, is more obvious on a Braille display than hearing a mispronunciation along with a lot of speech. It is generally regarded that speech is for speed and Braille is for correctness. For my student, Braille is her natural way of working and is an essential communication medium for deaf blind people.
Braille displays are very expensive and differ in price depending on the number of Braille cells and features available. They start at £1,500 and cost up to £10,000 with the most popular displays costing between £3,000 and £7,000.
One of the disadvantages of this pointed out by everybody is that large sums of money have to be spent on maintenance and renewal of equipment. Often the equipment does not work and moreover it is rapidly outdated, which means that large annual financial provisions are necessary to maintain an up-to-date level. The ICT co-ordinator, acting today as both educational consultant and technical assistant, finds that larger resources should be set aside for technical support. As it is, much time is taken from guidance and spent on maintenance because the same person has to take care of both functions. It has also created problems that don't seem to attract as much attention for the blind as they ought to. One of the problems is the extensive accept in the quality of Braille teaching.
The reality is that Braille is very much alive. It is amazingly flexible, a feature that enabled its creator to turn a most remarkable feat: he applied his code to express not only verbal language, but musical and scientific notation as well. Braille has adapted wonderfully well to Western languages and even to some oriental languages, as well as to scientific and technological advances.
Technology and Braille complement one another. Technology will enable Braille to continue to progress and eliminate its drawbacks. Leaders of services for blind people must, then, make every effort to improve Braille education, to encourage reading, implement action geared to standardizing and disseminating the code, and support research to innovate and adapt it to the demanding world of technology.
Special needs at Home - unit 3c
Voice Synthesizer
Sarah’s is new in this country, and she has all these problems she wants to use a technology that helps her life go easier. She had a hard time to do her homework at home, she always had to ask for help from her parent and write what she whatever she was saying. She had difficulties with her learning English pronunciation and vocabulary building. She wasn’t independent and also not so confident because, disturbing a person even though it was her mother and father she wouldn’t think that way. Sarah had difficulties with writing a book, that was her hobby, and she had an ability to write on her own.
Speech Synthesizer is a great text to voice synthesizer for Sarah to use on her personal time, to finish her homework at home. Speech Synthesizer is a powerful text to voice converting application that is extremely useful for converting all types of her texts to speech. She is more independence and enables her to do things she usually wouldn’t be able to do. The controller makes it more convenient, as it has a wide range of technologies it affects so it’s more mobile, and he can move round more. If it was a big massive thing, or needed loads of wires connecting everything he wouldn’t really have much freedom, so it’s an advantage that they are all wireless from the remote. Personal life of Sarah has a variety of position. She is a writer, she writes books and she gives to teachers to read. To write a book she needs to use a voice synthesizer, which is mounted on her computer on her computer. This gives her a voice, and enables her to do her homework, writing books on her spare time and so on. She can pre-select what she wants to write about, so she can just choose the subjects she wants to talk about. She can also use a projector which is controlled by her computer which allows her to give presentations with ease.
Sarah has difficulties with a few features include a sensible set in Multiplex text to voice synthesizer, it reads all her texts, Word documents, customizable display area, animated speaking character, eighteen different Voice outputs, adjustable speaking speeds, variable voice tones from low to high pitch, graphical sound output visual display and she can record the speech output as Wav format as well. In her future she will need the text to voice software comes with a set speech machine that gives a very high quality speech synthesis so that can make her work quicker and easier. The software has to be resigned for difficulty of use, and also it should be fast setup and interactivity.
The voice synthesizer software runs on all Windows Systems and has adjustable speaking speeds as well as an aesthetically designed user line Features designed for ease of use and interactivity, realistic embedded Multiplex Text-To-Speech Synthesizer, Ultra-High Quality Sound Output, Reads all Text, RTF and Word
documents, Customizable display area, Animated speaking character, Multiple Voice outputs, Adjustable speaking speed, Variable Voice Tones from Low to High Pitch, Graphical Equalizer sound-output visual display, Record speech output as Wav format, Software designed specifically for Kids, Fully graphical Windows based interface. The software is designed specifically for her with a fully graphical Windows based interface.
The disadvantage is that because they are technologies they will need maintenance and could malfunction, which could be very dangerous since Steven is quite dependant on them. It is very expensive, if it breaks, that would be a problem for her to buy, and she can not afford that much money. However, sometimes voice synthesizer has problems to type the exact word, if it wasn’t said in the right pronunciation.
It is important that Sarah is blind having access to speech and Braille output devices. But access to this assistive technology is not enough. In order for them to benefit fully from this technology, the educational software, applications software, and other electronic resources she use must be designed in such a way that her full functionality can be accessed by using her keyboard and speech output system. Access to electronic and information technology has the likely to help her positively with her disabilities. However, unless she becomes more knowledgeable about appropriate uses of technology, secure funding, and home together to maximize the independence, sharing, and output of her with disabilities as she is develops to college and home, and self-determined lives. Eventually, ensuring that all of the educational opportunities that technology provides are accessible to her will support her economy and give to the creation of a level playing field.
Special needs - Social Time- unit 3c
Category: communication- PDA
Sarah used to take notes or use the Braille to help her to keep her communication and take notes from her friends. She had hard times to do all this because, as you know she is blind and could not make notes and keep them in neat, she couldn’t be so organised in the past, she was getting help from others. For example her friends and family. This wasn’t very helpful for her because she wasn’t feeling very confotable and confident she always has a trouble concentrating at school because she gets distracted by others sometimes. There is no facilities that can also be produced for accessing areas that may not be easily reached by a disabled student.
Sarah using PDA on her social time to communicate with her friends and family, and also making notes of anyone she knows by the help of her family and friends. The PDA is an opportunities for Sarah. With many possiblities of having to work on her own PDA on her social time, the amount of availability of time has been reduced. Any learning resource that can be produced during the rare gaps in a contemporary students busy schedule is a valuable asset to them. The problem is having useful learning materials to hand when they have some spare time that could be produced for learning. Whilst it is impractical to carry physical course materials such as text books or her friends and family details all times such as phone numbers, emails, etc. It is possible to carry a large number of learning resources in a PDA. Such a portable resource has additional benefits for disabled students who may need extra time for study and reflection, and for them the PDA is able to provide additional support and assistance.
It is important to consider the accessibility of a PDA and its adaptability to accommodate particular disabilities. For example for those students with visual impairments and blind it is useful to be able to customise interface attributes such as using brailles. With the increased use of PDAs in many disciplines, both within university courses and the workplace, it is important that she begins to exploit the potential of these hand-held computers to the benefit her. The PDA can be a useful enabling technology for Sarah with physical or disabilities. Specific uses that can aid those with disabilities include as a dictation machine, on machines with sound facilities. As a text reader, on machines with sound facilities. as specialist dictionaries. Storing emergency contacts. The PDAs' organisational tools can be particularly helpful for Sarah, allowing reminder alarms to be set for important submission deadlines, lecture times, exams, party etc.
PDA’s for the blind are not equivalent to laptop computers. They possess less storage and processing power and are not designed to be the primary method for information processing and exchange. While many laptops have more than 512 megabytes of random access memory (ROM), even the largest PDA for the blind has only about 100 megabytes. It can contain more than forty gigabytes of hard disk drive storage capacity but can cause problems and ruin the PDA, whereas a PDA for the blind might today support a mini disk drive with about five gigabytes. PDA also has a bad battery, it doesn’t stay for long. PDA’s for the blind cannot read or create CDs. They also have no visual display. Display magnification is simply not an option.
The PDA Camera combination may assist with colour differentiation, even though its not so helpful for sarah because she can not see anything, but in some ways PDA could effect her. For example, in electronics, many components use a colour code to indicate the value. It is possible to take a photograph of a component and alter the colour balance to help differentiate colours. Whenever sarah records a mini video she gets the help from her frends, she wont be able to see it herself, but would show it to her family friends and make them explain her whats going on in the video. This facility has not yet been found to be useful by disabled students to see normally invisible infra-red signals. The PDA was originally conceived as an organisational aid and this is often overlooked when considering its use within social time. For example, blind students may have particular problems with scheduling and organising their study time.
In Sarah’s opinion PDA is very helpful for anyone with a speech defective as well as those who lack the confidence to ask a question in front of her friends. The increased opportunity for communication also provides the possibility of better helps between within works. For Sarah with communication or confidence difficulties a PDA can provide assistance. Therefore in class, she can write her details and organise it in neat to herself. Many PDAs are capable of recording short movies, she thinks she has an ability to record stuffs outside and then make it useful for her ownlife time and use the information in the movie, even though she is blind she gets the help from her parents. There is a misconception that all video content used within teaching should be to broadcast standard, but this is not the case. A quickly produced camcorder movie is more than appropriate for many purposes, and it is also more immediate.
Legislation
Disability and discrimination
The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 protects disabled people. The act sets out the state of affairs in which a person is disabled. It says disabled if the person has a mental or physical harm, this has an adverse effect on the person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, the adverse effect is substantial or if the person has a progressive condition such as HIV or multiple sclerosis or arthritis, and it will badly affect the persons ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities in the future, it will be treated as having a bad effect on the person now.
The Disability Discrimination Act defines a disabled person as someone with a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
Discrimination occurs when someone treats Sarah with a disability less favourably than he treats other people and this treatment cannot be justified. Discrimination also occurs when a person fails to comply with a duty to make a reasonable adjustment in relation to the disabled person and the failure to do so cannot be justified.
Four years on from the establishment of the first legal rights for disabled students, skill is publishing into higher education 2005, an informative and practical guide for disabled students considering applying to university or college.
A reasonable adjustment is any steps that it is reasonable to have to take in all the circumstances. These adjustments should ensure Sarah arrangements or premises do not put disabled person at a disadvantage in comparison to a non-disabled person.
Sarah would look at all the circumstances of the case before making a decision as to what constituted reasonable adjustments, for example things that have a bearing would be the financial cost of the adjustment and the availability to Sarah of financial or other help to assistance to help make an adjustment.
The definition of disability
So, for the purpose of my Coursework, I will not class Dyslexic users as a disabled person because the majority of dyslexic students are not affected so much to the extent whereby a substantial and long-term adverse effect is experienced on his/her ability to carry out common routine activities. However, I will choose to distinguish Dyslexic users as people with learning difficulties. I will include both my other users to be included under the definition of a disability. (Visually and physically impaired users) Sensory impairments are regarded as physical impairments and Visual impairments are therefore covered.cofe fer sefefew
