News and Events
The Globe and Mail, Monday, October 16, 2000
New technologies offer greater opportunities for disabled students
By Sean Fine
Blind since birth, Barry Abbott of Halifax can remember when he typed
a university essay without realizing that the typewriter ribbon had
worn out. "Someone would say, 'Geez, Barry, there's nothing
after page 5,' " he recalls.
Today's generation of blind and visually impaired students doesn't
have the same problems as Mr. Abbott, 29, who is now a counsellor at
the Atlantic Centre of Research, Access and Support for Students with
Disabilities at Saint Mary's University.
New technologies are changing the way disabled students learn, and
providing new opportunities for them in higher education.
Take Michael Osmond, a student at Saint Mary's. He has been blind
since he was three months old, when he was struck by retinoblastoma,
a childhood cancer that attacks the eye. When he began elementary school
at home in Newfoundland, he attended a school for the blind, and wasn't
integrated with sighted students until high school.
At the high school, he relied on the support and kindness of school
staff. He could read Braille, so a school employee would translate
assignments into Braille for him.
Beginning in 1990, he had access to a computer with a voice synthesizer.
A secretary at the school typed in the articles that Mr. Osmond needed
for his assignments. His computer then would talk to him -- reading
the text on the screen.
In 1998, studying anthropology at Saint Mary's, he learned how to
use a scanner -- a piece of equipment that, at $200 and up, does what
the secretary had done, only much faster: take a piece of text and
get it onto a computer screen.
"It opened up a lot of doors. You can scan your books into the
computer and download [the text] onto a computer disk. In a matter
of hours now, I can get access to any book that is available. I can
get a book from the library and have it come out onto a computer disk."
But what about a professor's lecture? How could he take notes?
The answer: By typing on a Braille 'n Speak, a 0.5-kilogram portable
note-taking mini-computer about the size of a video cassette. It has
a six-key Braille keyboard so he can take notes, and a voice synthesizer
to read his notes back to him. It stores the information he types on
a computer chip, so he can put it on a computer disk and have his laptop
synthesizer "read" it to him. The Braille 'n Speak is made
by Blazie Engineering Inc., a division of Freedom Scientific of Florida,
and sells for $1,299 (U.S.) and up.
But even that machine may be replaced as a result of the Liberated
Learning Project, being spearheaded by the Atlantic Centre in partnership
with International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y., Maritime
Telegraph and Telephone Co. Ltd. of Halifax and universities in Australia,
England, the United States and Canada, funded by a $1.2-million grant
from the J.W. McConnell Foundation.
The project is creating a new way for disabled students such as Mr.
Osmond to obtain classroom notes.
Speech-recognition software developed by IBM immediately converts
the professor's voice to text, which appears on a large screen at the
front of the classroom. Students then may obtain the text on disk or
download it later to print it or convert it to Braille.
The project, to be tested at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto
beginning in January and at the University of the Sunshine Coast in
Australia, got its start earlier this month at Saint Mary's.
"It went wonderfully," project manager Keith Bain says of
the first day of classroom tests. "We had three classes. The professors
had no technical problems. I think most people were very impressed."
Mr. Osmond is not sure yet whether he will take advantage of the new
technology. He wants to test it first.
He agrees, though, that technology is making a huge difference for
disabled students. Though the technology is often expensive and beyond
the means of individual students, the Atlantic Centre makes equipment
available to students such as him.
For children born blind today, "that child should be able to
do as well as everyone else, I would think."
Copyright 2000 | The Globe and Mail
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