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Educational Tools for the Visually Impaired

There are many products on the market for the visually impaired, which generally means people with visual acuity of 20/200 or poorer. These products are needed because, according to the Braille Institute, one out of 20 children attending preschool in the United States is visually impaired. If these children do not have access to technology that can assist them, they may flounder in school.
  1. Math

    • New innovations in technology help the visually impaired student do better in math. One such item is tactile triangles that have magnetic backing on them so beginning students can start to learn about creating shapes, an important skill in their early education. Another is a device that, when fed a heavy-weight page with line drawings on it, will heat the ink, raising it. This enables students to feel images or line drawings that might be used in math to teach lines and shapes.

    Auditory

    • Some companies have made available the technology to take the written word and change it into audio format. You do this by downloading the technology, then using a drop-down menu that offers the choice of reading out loud. This technology can be paused, then restarted as the student needs. Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic has put out a "Daisy Player" that is small enough to carry. It uses a human voice, not the typical electronic voice, to read digital information.

    Magnifiers

    • Tools to help the visually impaired to see print better range from simple hand-held magnifying glasses to lenses that fit into glass frames that the user will wear, or that fit a computer monitor to enlarge the print on the screen up to 16 times its normal size.

    Speech Input

    • A few companies have devices that type what is dictated into them, although these items are not specifically for the vision-impaired. These devices tend to have a slow typing speed, limited computer memory and a limited ability to recognize a speaker's voice.

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