By Elizabeth Davis
MTSU Raider Shakedown Reporter
(Editor's note: Elizabeth Davis is a visually impaired student who successfully completed a Media Writing course in MTSU's College of Entertainment and Media. She was often assisted by the Disability and Access Center. This is her story.)
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. --
The Disability and Access Center at Middle Tennessee State University offers a
wide range of tools and services for visually impaired students, helping them to
succeed.
Some of these include
portable CCTV video magnifiers, talking software on computers, Braille note-taking
devices, Perkins Braille writers, and much more. Other options are large print
magnifying glasses, Victor Reader Streams, Brailled documents, and study tools
like Kurzwiel. The center even has
Pack-Mates. Its staff can also write out graphs in Braille. There is even Zoom
Text, which is just big print.
A few of the different
kinds of speaking software are Window Eyes and a couple of others. But the most
useful one is called Job Access With Speech, or JAWS screen reader for
short. This is a program in which a
blind or partially blind person can hear what the computer wants him or her to
do. Basically, it talks to the visually-impaired person so that he or she can
use the computer just like a sighted individual. JAWS was made by someone with
blindness in the 1980s, and it has been a good piece of software ever
since. It can read off documents, tell
someone how to go online, and translate text into speech. It can also guide a person with this
disability on how to use the computer itself.
Another kind of software
with speech is Window Eyes. This is a talking program that came out before JAWS
and was basically just an earlier version. It is much harder to use than JAWS. Window
Eyes, which is free with Microsoft Office Word, was created by GW Micro. It lost
to JAWS because it was not advanced enough to keep up with the other company's
software.
Another kind of speaking
equipment made for the blind is called Non-Visual Desktop Access. This is a
type of open-source screen reader that people in the computer community have
put together. It is free for blind people. Like JAWS and Window Eyes, NVDA speaks
to the visually impaired. It reads things off to them like textbooks and
documents.
William Burgess is the head
of the Disability and Access Center at MTSU.
He started working there in the fall of 2013.
“I was working at the
Tennessee Rehab Center in Smyrna, Tenn.," said Burgess. "While
working there, I heard about Amy Birkes in the MTSU Adaptive Technology
Department. I did not get to visit whenever she was working. But I did get to
visit the ATC while I was still working at TRC. Shortly after that, I heard
they had an opening. This job compares nicely with the job I was doing at TRC because
it involves visual impairment services and teaching technology. I had those
skills working with adaptive technology there, brought those skills here, and
it worked out really well.”
Burgess earned a bachelor's
degree in Elementary School Education at MTSU in 2006. He worked with
technology as a hobby, later incorporating those skills into his job at DAC.
Burgess also helps the
blind by scanning printed materials into Braille with a scanner.
“We scan it and then
perform Optical Character Recognition or OCR," he said. "Doing that
gives us the text virtually and reproduces the printed page of a Word document.
Sometimes Word documents need to be cleaned up a little bit because OCR is not
perfect. After we clean a document up, we use a piece of software called Tiger
to translate it into Braille and send it to our Braille Printer.”
Braille is a code of
dots that make up letters, words, and numbers. The system enables the blind to
read and write. It was developed by French inventor Louis Braille after he
accidently blinded himself with his father’s drill at age 3.
In fact, a scanner uses
light to reproduce a piece of paper or whatever is on the picture bed. It uses
the light to reflect that image and takes pictures of it. The print is
eventually turned into Braille with an Embosser.
There are many kinds of
Brailling devices for blind people at MTSU to use. For example, the Perkins
Braille writer is similar to a manual typewriter in the print world. It is very
heavy and requires paper. The student presses down hard on the keys to make Braille.
It was invented in the 1830s and was first introduced at the Perkins Institute
in Boston.
There are also some
large-print choices available to low-vision students. A few of these include
the CCTV video magnifier, magnifying glasses, and large-print books. A CCTV is
basically a big-screen television set that can enlarge print. The low-vision
student holds a book up to the screen, and it will make the letters on the page
look bigger. This helps him or her see the document better. Magnifying glasses
do more or less the same thing, as do large-print books.
Burgess also helps students
download software onto their computers. He sometimes suggests a software
technology called Kurzwiel. There are two different versions of this product:
Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000. Both have built-in text to speech. Kurzweil 3000
is made for the students with sight. All they have to do is open up a chapter
in one of their books, and a picture will show up on the screen. It is mainly
for students who have reading disabilities.
Kurzweil 1000 is for the students with little or no vision. It reads the
text aloud to the listener.
Another type of technological
device that blind people can listen to is the Victor Reader Stream, a small,
hand-held device for book downloads. Individuals can read text by hearing what
the words say.
In Burgess's opinion,
the choice of technology depends on the skill of the visually impaired
individual.
“It all depends on what
skills they come here with," Burgess added. "If they have no Braille
skills, I’m definitely not going to recommend that they learn Braille along
with their full-college load. If they have Braille skills, then I’ll show them
our Braille note-takers. We have some old Perkins Braillers for those who might
be interested. I try to show people as much technology as I can and then let
them choose.”
Burgess can even give
advice to blind or partially blind students on how to protect their computers
from hackers and viruses. He teaches them how to clean their computers with
Windows software. When pushed, an automatic scanner will remove malware or
anything else that might harm the individual's computer.
“Pop-ups generally tell
you if your computer is infected, providing information for removal of the
virus," he said. "I almost always start by cleaning it with the Windows.
I haven’t seen a lot of Macs with viruses, so I haven’t had to deal with that. But
with Windows, I pretty much recommend starting with a fresh install of Windows.
Then you can re-install your programs and download your files from a secondary
hard drive or cloud storage provider. Dropbox and Google Drive are good places
to store your files on the Internet.”
The Disabilities
Department at MTSU offers many solutions to help visually impaired students at
MTSU to succeed. They range from Braille-writing devices and audio equipment to
computer software. Burgess is standing by to help.
For more information
about the Disabilities Department in the Technology Access Center at MTSU,
visit http://www.mtsu.edu/dac.
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